95% Of Abortions Are Done Illegally In Iran – Official
An Iranian official says according to the available data about 95 percent of abortions in the country are carried out through "illegal" procedures.
An Iranian official says according to the available data about 95 percent of abortions in the country are carried out through "illegal" procedures.
Saleh Ghasemi, head of the Center for Strategic Research on Population, said on Thursday that abortion is one of the most effective variables in population growth, adding that "Only three percent of abortions [in Iran] are legal, and two percent of abortions are spontaneous."
He also said that only four percent of abortions happen due to what he called "illegitimate relations".
The ban on abortion in Iran has made women go to underground and often unsanitary centers to terminate their pregnancies. Unsanitary abortion has caused the death of many women and sometimes it has caused lifetime complications.
Earlier in the year, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said efforts to increase the country's population are among the most urgent duties and essential policies of the Islamic Republic.
Parliament has passed legislation to outlaw tubectomy, vasectomy, and the free dispensation of contraceptives other than where pregnancy would threaten a woman's health. The health ministry has advised women over 35 to wait only a year before becoming pregnant again and under-35s to wait six months.
Medical experts have warned that the new legislation would increase sexually transmitted diseases by restricting access to condoms.
The law obliges the government to offer incentives, including a 7.5-fold increase in child-benefit payments to government employees, interest-free loans, and other benefits. While the new law does not include a ban on prenatal screening, doctors have been advised not to encourage it.
In an open letter, signed by the sister of French citizen Benjamin Briere, the wife of Austrian Kamran Ghaderi, the wife of Swedish-Iranian doctor on death row Ahmadreza Djalali and the daughter of German citizen Jamshid Sharmahd and addressed to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, they said their loved ones “wonder whether EU officials have forgotten them and how much longer they will have to endure this ordeal.”
“We, the families of French, Swedish, German, and Austrian citizens, who have been illegally detained by the Iranian regime, are outraged that the European Union seems to be ignoring these crimes,” they added.
The families also listed legal and other mistreatments their loved one have had to endure. “These European citizens have been subjected to torture, grossly unfair trials based on fabricated charges, without access to legal counsel or proper medical care. All of them are held hostage by a dictatorial regime that does not even abide by the minimum standard of international legal and human rights.”
Briere has been detained since May 2020 and sentenced to eight years in jail on spying charges while Ghaderi has been held for almost seven years since January 2016. Djalali has been in jail for six years and is awaiting execution in Iran on charges of spying for Israel leading to the killing of nuclear scientists.
Amnesty International has accused the Islamic Republic of taking Djalali "hostage" and using him as “a pawn in a cruel political game." Sharmahd was kidnapped in Dubai and transferred to Iran in late July 2020 as Iran accused him of bombing a mosque in Shiraz 2008 that killed 14 people and wounded more than 200 others.
Iran has been accused of wrongfully detaining at least a dozen foreign and dual nationals on trumped up charges, effectively as hostages to extract concessions from Western governments. Most of them are held on disputed spying charges.
According to the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), there are currently some 20 dual nationals and foreign nationals with US or European passports detained in Iran.
Borrell said on Monday he was “less confident” about efforts to restore the landmark nuclear deal, which was abandoned by former US president Donald Trump in 2018.
Earlier in the month, Iran reiterated its call for the release of its former officials imprisoned in Europe while Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic previously jailed in Iran for over two years, said Tehran is on the hunt for both Swedes and Belgians to exchange with them.
Foreign ministry’s spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Saturday that Assadollah Assadi, serving a 20-year sentence in Belgium over a terror attack in Paris, and former jailor Hamid Nouri, sentenced to life in prison in Sweden for his role in 1988 prison purges, should be released as their trials were illegal.
Assadi, 50, a former attaché at the Iranian embassy in Austria, was convicted of plotting to bomb a gathering of the exiled opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) near Paris on June 30, 2018. Iran says Nouri’s detention is driven by “false allegations” made by the MEK.
