Iran’s parliament has voted to ban permanent forms of contraception, state news agency IRNA reported, endorsing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s call for measures to increase the country’s dwindling population.
The bill prohibiting vasectomies and similar procedures in women is parliament’s response to a decree Khamenei issued in May calling for more babies to “strengthen national identity” and counter “undesirable aspects of Western lifestyles.”
Doctors who violate the ban will be punishable by law, IRNA reported, adding that the bill, approved by 143 out of 231 members present in parliament, also bans the advertising of birth control in a country where condoms had been widely available and family planning considered entirely normal.
The law now goes to Iran’s Guardian Council, which will determine if it complies with Islam.
The measure aims to reverse the declining population, but reformists see it as part of a drive by conservatives keep Iran’s highly educated female population in the roles of wives and mothers.
It also worries health advocates who fear an increase in illegal abortions. State media outlets reported that the number of illegal terminations between March 2012 and March last year was 12,000, more than half the total number of abortions that year.
Abortion is legal in Iran if the mother is in danger or if the fetus is diagnosed with certain defects.
During the war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iran offered incentives for families to have more children, but that was reversed in the late 1980s, amid concerns that rapid population growth could hobble the economy and drain resources.
Khamenei’s edict has once again reversed the policy, doing away with the “Fewer Kids, Better Life” motto adopted when contraception was made widely available and subsidized by the state.
Iran’s birthrate is 1.6 children per woman, legislator Ali Motahari said, according to IRNA. At that rate, the population of more than 75 million would fall to 31 million by 2094, legislator Mohammed Saleh Jokar said.
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