I want to call this barbaric but even barbarians  would have the decency to see that even a condemned woman's child is born in humane conditions.

The case of the woman who has been condemned to hang for marrying a Chirstian in Sudan has outraged the entire world. Now add to that the ordeal the woman had to go through to give birth.

The Week:

A Sudanese woman sentenced to hang for renouncing Islam by marrying a Christian, gave birth while shackled to the floor of her cell, it emerged yesterday.

The Omdurman Women’s Prison, near Khartoum, refused to allow Meriam Ibrahim, 27, to go to hospital after she went into labour. Her child, named Maya, will be kept with Ibrahim until the age of two. Ibrahim will then be executed and Maya will be put in the care of her father, Daniel Wani.

Wani, 27, who is in a wheelchair due to muscular dystrophy, has said he does not know how he will be able to look after his daughter.

He told the Daily Telegraph that his wife gave birth on Tuesday with her legs shackled. "They kept a chain on her legs," he said. "She is very unhappy about that".

Last night "outrage was growing around the world", The Times reports. "What’s happening to Meriam, it's like an incident out of the dark ages," said Hala al-Karib, the Sudanese director of Siha, a women’s rights group. "Meriam should be released immediately and the charges against her should be dropped," Ms al-Karib added.

Ibrahim's lawyer Mohaned Mustafa Elnour described the parents as "happy and proud", but said that they remain aware of the gravity of their situation. "The family are taking some time to enjoy the birth before they return to fighting the injustice of Meriam's sentence," Elnour said.

Ibrahim was sentenced to 100 lashes for adultery and death by hanging for apostasy – the crime of renouncing her faith. Ibrahim disputes the charge, saying that she has always been Christian. But the judge rejected her claim, finding instead that she had grown up a Muslim because of the faith of her father and was therefore guilty because she married someone not of her religion.

The ruling invalidates her marriage, meaning that she is also guilty of sex outside of wedlock, which is regarded as adultery under Sudan’s penal code.

Of course, Sudan isn't the only country where women are whipped, stoned, or hung for apostasy or adultery. A Pew poll found an astonishing 64% of people in Egypt and Pakistan supporting the death penalty for apostasy. The UN can't do anything because the Muslim lobby would start screaming "bigotry" if they did.

For the foreseeable future, the world is going to have to deal with these proponents of Dark Age brutality. A collective response by the west would seem to be in order, but our clownish leaders can't even agree on what to do about Syrian jihadists, who pose a threat. President Obama insists we must arm and train the terrorists to defeat Assad - regardless of whether we can tell if they would use the weapons and training against us or our interests.

Meiam will continue to rot in her cell, chained to the floor like an animal because there is not the will in the west to do much of anything about it.