Honor Killings

As always, in my free time, I’m scrolling online, looking for some good news. Got the normal amount of North Korean threat articles. The most intriguing one of the night was about a woman in Jordan who was found dead, with a slice down her stomach and a slit throat as well. The woman was pregnant, and the article said the fetus was around four months old. The mother was somewhere in her twenties. Now when I first saw the title, I had thought that the woman had committed suicide, and had slit her belly only prior to her throat. An exceedingly gruesome thought. However, after reading the extremely brief article I am under the impression that it was a family member or close friend who committed the crime. The article uses the phrase “honor killing” a couple times. To cap off the article, it states that in Jordan murder is punishable by death, while “honor killers” can have a reduced sentence. Now while I suppose I could look this information up, I would like to formulate a hypothesis first. I believe that either by religion or family structure within Jordan, premarital pregnancy is a punishable or a dishonorable crime. The situation may be so dire that the mother to be asks someone to kill her in order to save her from a worser fate. In doing so, the killer receives a more lenient punishment for doing as the victim asks, and by putting her out of future misery. After writing that sentence, I looked up the definition of honor killings. It is much like I thought, in regards to the victim being one who has dishonored the family. However, what I did not guess correctly, is that these women do not ask for this, they are targeted for dishonor ing their family. The fact that the woman does not ask for this makes more sense to me, but the reduced sentences of said killers makes less. Perhaps news of a trial about this incident will shed some light; although I am doubtful this case will make any more headlines.