Iran's Health Ministry has suspended the issuance of licenses for the production and import of first trimester prenatal screening kits, in what critics in the medical community called a thinly veiled attempt to help boost flagging population growth and a risk to expecting mothers.
Hadi Yazdani, a doctor and member of the Nation's Union Party, called out the government on social media, saying the step appears to be yet another move to restrict women's rights and their access to abortions.
"First, they said screenings should not be done for everyone and would be possible only with the request of the family and the opinion of a specialist doctor. Now, they have stopped issuing licenses for the production and import of screening kits for the first trimester of pregnancy," he said.
"Since legal abortions are only in the first 18 weeks of pregnancy, this means a complete ban on legal abortion!"
Iran used to be praised for its effective population policies following the devastating 1980-88 war with Iraq that discouraged pregnancy among underage girls, offered free condoms and subsidized vasectomies, and encouraged families to have two or fewer children.
But a policy shift occurred after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei labeled the previous population control policies a "mistake," leading to directives that limited access to contraception.
In a speech in 2020, Khamenei was quoted as saying that “any actions or measures to decrease the population should [only] be taken after [the population] reaches 150 million.” In 2021, the population of the country stood at 87.9 million.
Many Iranians have taken to social media to vent over the policy change, with many urging the medical community to push the government given the costs of raising children -- especially those who would have been detected with serious abnormalities during the screening process -- in the current difficult economic climate.
Yasser Rahmanirad, a doctor known for his support of protesters, warned on Instagram that even parents or specialists requesting screening will not be able to find it, leading to yet another erosion of women's rights in a country already in the midst of a year of unrest over the issue.
"How long will Iranian women's wombs be a playground for power?" he asked.
In recent years, a growing number of Iranian women have chosen to have fewer or no children -- mainly due to economic woes, changing gender roles, the growth of women's education, and family planning programs.
That trend has seen Iran's population-growth rate decline from over 4 percent in the 1980s to just 1.29 percent in 2020, according to the World Bank, a development that has alarmed Iran’s clerical establishment and prompted the tighter guidelines.
However, there are serious doubts over the effectiveness of Iran's stringent anti-abortion laws and rights groups and health experts have warned that new measures restricting women’s access to abortions will lead to unwanted pregnancies and the birth of children with congenital defects that the country's strained medical system will not be able to accommodate.