I wonder if Jimmy Carr was able to crack a joke about this

In the New York Times:

Despite a decade of social transformation in Saudi Arabia, unwed pregnancy remains a taboo that exists in a legal gray area. The children of unmarried immigrants face unique perils. They are routinely deprived of birth certificates, medical care and education, in violation of Saudi and international law, a New York Times investigation found.

Kenyan women and children suffer in particular, The Times found, because officials at the Kenyan Embassy berate them, stonewall them or saddle them with years of paperwork to return home. Hundreds of children, and potentially many more, have been left in the lurch — recognized by neither Saudi Arabia nor Kenya.

These children are the victims of an exploitative industry that recruits African women to Saudi Arabia — a pipeline from which Kenyan government officials personally profit through financial interests in staffing agencies. Hundreds of Kenyan women have been killed, and reports of rapes and beatings are common.

For those women who become pregnant, whether from an assault or a relationship, birthing a baby into legal limbo is a final cruelty.

With no path forward, some contemplate giving up their children. At least as wards of the state, they would receive identity documents and an education....

All of this flies in the face of a Saudi law that codifies the rights of children — unequivocally, regardless of their immigration status or lineage — to identification documents, medical care and education.

“The law deems a child born to a non-Saudi mother in an irregular or undocumented manner to be affiliated with the mother and to bear her nationality, and a birth certificate is issued for such child accordingly,” the Saudi government’s Center for International Communication said in a statement to The Times.

But the government offers no public pathway for unmarried mothers to register their births. The kingdom has no birthright citizenship, and a top official at a major maternity hospital in Riyadh said that he was unsure how a single mother could get a birth certificate, but that the process would involve the police.

Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

A pregnant Kenyan also can't deal with it via abortion:

Saudi Arabia permits abortions only in limited circumstances. Ms. Kihiu feared that an underground abortion would kill her. She also wanted the baby. She was elated when she found out she was having a girl.

Pregnant women are entitled to medical care, regardless of their paperwork, the Saudi government center said. But when an unmarried woman gives birth, the hospital must notify the police of an “illegal pregnancy,” said Dr. Mufareh Asiri, the medical director of the women’s health hospital at King Saud Medical City.

"Illegal pregnancy".  Huh.   

Oh, and speaking of Jimmy Carr and other comedians performing at Saudi Arabia for (no doubt) large paychecks:  I already didn't like Carr, at all, but I see Jack Whitehall (who has a more likeable comedy persona) was also one who went there.  Shame.