Abortions in Lebanon: Facts and Fiction

Abortions in Lebanon are technically "illegal" but you should take that with a grain of salt.

First of all, not all abortions are illegal. If there is a medical reason for that: Such as direct danger to the life of the mother, or a blighted ovum (the sac is there but there is no fetus), we can easily do an abortion. This can be done with pills (misoprostol, using the WHO protocol) or via a procedure known as a Dilation and Curettage (DNC). If you are Lebanese and do not have a third party insurance or medical coverage such as CNSS (Daman) it can be done under the coverage of the ministry of public health.

Costs:

Cytotec (Misoprostol) costs 737,770 L.L as of 2026. A consultation by an OBGYN (Yes we need to document that there was a "blighted ovum") will set you back somewhere between 40 and 100 USD depends on where you are.

DNC: Here in the south, I have seen doctors take somewhere between 350 and 700 USD, depending on the case, coverage, doctor, hospital... etc.

There are doctors who do it in their clinics and can charge up to USD 800 for the procedure. In my opinion this is too risky for the patient and the doctor.

Legality and covering our behinds as doctors:

Paperwork can be fudged, and we can take an ultrasound image that shows an empty sac even if there were really a fetus there. The only thing we cannot do is large volumes of abortions because statistically it is not possible to have like 10 abortions a month, every month, cataloged as malformations.

The main text governing the legality of the abortions is "Qanun Al Adab Al Tubiyya" ¶31. (You can find a copy here). The text is archaic. Published in 1967 and amended in 1969. (For comparision Spain’s assisted reproduction framework, primarily governed by Law 14/2006 was published in 2006 and is reviewed regularly).

Religion:

When getting abortions, most people's religious beliefs go out the window.

I can confirm the following however. According to the office of Sayed Fadlallah, there must be direct harm to the mother, an abnormal health situation, or she is in danger of being killed by her family (same video but later time).

The rest of the religions in Lebanon have different opinions of course.