A popular Egyptian TV presenter has been sentenced to three years behind bars for discussing on-air how women might become pregnant outside of marriage, a topic the government feels is “promoting indecency.”


According to BBC, Al-Nahar TV’s Doaa Salah asked viewers on her show, With Dody, whether they’d considered having sex before marriage, and also suggested that if unmarried women wanted kids, one possible tactic could be to marry briefly and have children before divorcing. “You simply need to have the money and then separate,” she said, appearing on the episode entitled “Buy a Man” while wearing a fake baby bump.

Such open discussion was not appreciated by a court in Cairo, which found Salah guilty of inciting debauchery and sentenced her not only to three years in prison, but will also require her to pay a 10,000 Egyptian Pound ($566) fine to the lawyer who filed the lawsuit against her.


After the episode aired in July, the show was suspended for three months at the behest of the country’s media union, which said the discussion “promoted immoral ideas that are alien to our society and threaten the fabric of the Egyptian family.”

Another presenter on the same channel, Reham Saeed, was suspended for three months after spending an episode discussing extra-marital affairs.