Many scholars have looked at gendered legal discrimination in the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, but few have taken an intersectional approach focused on marital status to examine its impact on women’s rights. Morocco and Tunisia largely represent opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of gendered legal discrimination in MENA countries. Although Morocco’s 2003/2018 Penal Code and 2004 Family Law reforms improved women’s rights relatively, women who fall outside of the legal marital framework –single women, single mothers, divorcees, widows– and their children continue to face numerous obstacles to equal treatment before the law. The discrimination begins with the denial of unmarried women basic sexual and reproductive health (SRH) rights, including SRH education and services, such as access to contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion. In contrast, Tunisia is an exemplar both in the MENA region and beyond in terms of women and men’s access to SRH rights, which include SRH education programs in the public high schools, a broad selection of contraception and emergency contraception available regardless of marital status, and first trimester abortions upon demand and free at state hospitals. This disparity in Moroccan women’s treatment drives its high levels of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and maternal mortality rates, especially among unmarried women. Additionally, the study demonstrates how the Moroccan law holds single mothers –but not fathers– accountable for their “illegitimate” children’s maintenance and welfare, since marriage, not biological paternity, determines a child’s name, maintenance, and inheritance rights. In contrast, Tunisia with the 1998 Patronymic Law granted children born outside of marriage the same rights and protections as “legitimate” children, including the right to a name, maintenance, and inheritance rights. This comparative case study analysis includes a broad examination of Morocco and Tunisia’s current legal codes, recent reforms, and pertinent Supreme Court (Court of Cassation) rulings as well as each countries UN human rights convention commitments and numerous national and sub-national studies. I also conducted 200+ in-depth interviews with Moroccan and Tunisian women’s civil society activists, lawyers, judges, parliamentarians, and government officials, and focus groups with single mothers, between 2013 and 2019. The analysis offers unique insights into the way Moroccan laws marginalize and exclude women –but not men– who fall outside the marital framework and how Tunisia has remedied many of these gendered issues.