July 29, 2022
The Iranian Health Ministry has announced that “aiding and abetting” abortions is now a crime and medical professionals acting as “accessories” to abortion will face heavy fines and lose their medical licenses.
“If a doctor is involved in an intentional abortion, his permit will be revoked, even if it is his first time,” announced Saber Jabberi, the ministry’s head of the Youth Population Department, on June 21.
A week later, the Food and Drug Administration ordered Iranian pharmacies to move their boxes of condoms to the back of the shop so they could not be seen through the pharmacy’s windows.
The pair of moves was part of the continuing effort by the regime to push forward with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi’s grand scheme to boost the population of Iran to 150 million by discouraging all birth control efforts.
Asserting that abortion is forbidden in Islamic law, Jabberi said that the government’s Law on Family Protection and Youth stipulated that the fetus “has a right to life,” meaning that “once a fetus is formed, it is not at the disposal of the father or the mother.”
That is a much more draconian position than that taken just three days later by the US Supreme Court, which ruled that there is no right in the Constitution to abortion in the US, so that states and the federal government are free to make laws allowing, banning or regulating abortion.
In recent years, in line with decrees issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi, policymaking in the Islamic Republic has pushed to the boost the population at whatever cost. This has involved carrots like $6,000 loans to couples who have a third child, and sticks like the banning of family planning services.
Elective abortions were never legal in the Islamic Republic. Doctors have only ever been allowed to provide abortion services to women whose lives were in danger, or if screening showed the fetus had serious defects.
In line with the policy of promoting large families, the daily Jam-e Jam published a report lauding the seven-member family of Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo as a model for Iranians to follow. “Many actors and celebrities,” it proclaimed, “such as Angelina Jolie and even some political officials in European and American countries, have many children, and try to remind their people that having many children is a valuable attainment.”
This was an unusual argument, given that the Islamic Republic normally decries the lifestyles of westerners and urges Iranians not to follow their examples.
Another action by the government to increase the population is to deprive the public of cheap contraceptives. But it has not yet banned contraceptives.
Khamenehi has continued relentlessly to promote childbearing. As recently as May 18, he described the prospect of an aging population as “horrific.”
In 2005, the Supreme Leader and a cluster of other clerics issued fatvas that gave rise to an eventual, single-article law, entitled “Therapeutic Abortion,” which
allowed abortion before the fourth month of pregnancy, but only if three doctors and the official medical examiner confirmed that either the baby had a life-changing condition, or the mother’s life was in danger.
On June 18, however, Health Minister Bahram Eyenollahi issued a new directive. Prenatal screening for defects in Iran can now only be carried out on the would-be parent’s personal request; medical professionals cannot advise them to pursue screening.
The directive states that pregnant women under age 35, and women who have not previously given birth to genetically defective babies or babies suffering from Down’s syndrome—despite the fact that Down’s syndrome is not usually inherited but random—“do not need to be tested.” Insurers have been instructed not to cover prenatal screening for women who do not fall into those narrow categories.