The Youthful Population and Protection of the Family law, which was ratified by the powerful Guardian Council on November 1, appears to be using fear to force Iranian women to have more children, say the experts.
The law severely restricts access to abortion, contraception, voluntary sterilization services, and even uses the death penalty for those who carry out abortion in large scale.
The new legislation is the result of years of public statements by the Iranian officials including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who have decried the declining fertility rate in the country.
It will remain in place for seven years and come into effect in the coming weeks, outlawing the sterilization and free distribution of contraceptives in the public care system unless a pregnancy endangers a woman’s health.
“The consequences of this law will be crippling for women and girls’ right to health and represents an alarming and regressive U-turn by a government that had been praised for progress on the right to health,” nine UN experts including Javaid Rehman, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, said in a statement.
“We will closely monitor the impact of this law on maternal deaths and ensure accountability for failure to act with due diligence to prevent the death of women and girls with risk pregnancies, or the death of those that undergo unsafe abortions.”
Iran has been praised in the past by world health experts and organizations for the progress that it has made in the health sector and the provision of services to women for sexual and reproductive health.
In the 1980s, the revolutionary government in Tehran introduced a new voluntary family planning program that saw the fertility rate drop from 5.5 to 2 within two decades of the program’s inception.
But now Iranian officials are worried about the number of births in the country as women increasingly decide to have children at later age.
The average age for Iranian women to give birth was 29 in the first six months of this Iranian year which began on March 21 according to data released by National Organisation for Civil Registration. There were just over 533 thousand birth registered in the country in the first six months. In the previous Iranian year of 1399, there were 1,114,000 births registered in the country which saw an 84,000 birth decline compare to the previous year.
Ali Akbar Mahzoun the head of Population Office said earlier this month that the number of births in the country has had a declining trend in the past five years with the fertility rate standing at 1.65 for all Iranian women.
“Iranian legislators are avoiding addressing Iranians’ many serious problems, including government incompetence, corruption, and repression, and instead are attacking women’s fundamental rights,” said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The population growth law blatantly undermines the rights, dignity, and health of half of the country’s population, denying them access to essential reproductive health care and information.”
Khamenei worried about the declining fertility rate and an ageing population, introduced a 14 point action policy back in 2014 to overhaul the family planning program and push for higher fertility rate.
The parliament now controlled by hardliners has recently introduced new incentives for couples to marry earlier in life and have children sooner by providing them with generous loans from state banks.
“We urge the Government to immediately repeal the law on ‘Youthful Population and Protection of the Family’ and to take measures to end the criminalization of abortion and to ensure that all women can access all necessary health services, including sexual and reproductive health care, in a manner that is safe, affordable, and consistent with their human rights,” the UN experts said.
