Is abortion permissible if a woman becomes pregnant through fornication? Is it preferable to abort or keep the child if the man who committed fornication with her wishes to marry her while she is pregnant with his child? Is the child considered illegitimate?

Abortion is not permissible if the pregnancy is more than forty days old, even if it is a pregnancy resulting from adultery, because it is an assault on a created soul.

It is permissible for a man who committed adultery with a woman to marry her after sincere repentance.

The child born out of wedlock is legally attributed to his mother and her family, and the rulings of filiation, such as حرمة (prohibition of marriage within certain degrees of kinship) and inheritance, apply to him. This is the view of the majority. Abu Hanifa, Ishaq ibn Rahawayh, and others differed, stating that the child is attributed to his father if the father claims him, and the child is not to blame, as he is born upon the natural disposition (fitra). The majority’s argument for not attributing the child born out of wedlock to the father is, however, unless his father disavows him, or he was born of a slave woman whom the father did not own, or a free woman with whom he committed adultery, then the child is not attributed to him and does not inherit from him. If a woman marries the man with whom she became pregnant illegitimately, the child is attributed to her mother and her family, and the child becomes a stepchild to her husband, and only the rulings of a stepchild apply to him.