RABAT, Morocco — This weekend was supposed to have been a celebration of love.

The invitations had been sent, the flowers and cake ordered. Family and friends were getting ready to witness the wedding of a young Moroccan political reporter and a Sudanese university professor she met at a human-rights conference.

Instead, Hajar Raissouni and Rifaat al-Amin were arrested on Aug. 31 as they were leaving a gynecologist’s office in the Moroccan capital Rabat. They were charged with having sex outside of marriage and an abortion, both crimes in the North African kingdom.

The arrests outraged many in Morocco who saw it as another example of the government persecuting critical journalists and activists by charging them with moral crimes.

The doctor, along with an anesthesiologist and an office assistant, has been charged with performing an abortion. But he insists that he did not. Quite the contrary, he said he had saved Ms. Raissouni’s life after she suffered a blood clot.