WASHINGTON -- Men in Iran wanting to get vasectomies will soon be out of luck now that the country's parliament has approved a ban on surgical, permanent forms of birth control. Violators will be punished as having committed a crime, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
The bill also bans similar procedures for women but includes an exemption for cases in which the surgery "is urgently needed for health," the news agency reports.
Why pass such legislation? In two words: declining birthrates. The news agency reports that the country's birthrate is 1.8 children per woman, according to Khalil Ali-Mohammadzadeh of Iran's Health and Treatment Commission of Women's Cultural and Social Council. That's below the 2.1 birthrate needed to replace the population as people die.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has publicly encouraged young Iranians to have more babies as a way of pushing back on "undesirable aspects of Western lifestyles."
The bill's passage and Khamenei's exhortations actually represent a reversal of Iranian policy. After the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, birth control became widespread and was deemed acceptable to conservative Muslims by then-Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who raised alarms that the economy couldn't support the birthrate growth. People could get free contraceptives at government clinics, and family planning counseling became a requirement for those wanting to get married. There were slogans such as "Less Children, Better Lives," and health workers focused on strategies to reduce infant mortality rates.
Some health advocates worry that the ban will fuel a rise in abortions, which are illegal except when the life of the mother is in danger or the baby is diagnosed with certain defects.
In 2012, Khamenei called the population-control policy of the 1990s a mistake. "Government officials were wrong on this matter, and I, too, had a part," he said at the time. "May God and history forgive us."
As for the birth-control ban, it still faces some internal review. Reuters reports that it now heads to the Guardian Council, where officials will weigh whether it fits with their interpretation of Islam.
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