Women in Tehran, 2017. Photo: Jochen Eckel/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.In the early 1990s, Iran had one of best family planning programmes in the developing world. From 1980 to 2010, it managed to cut the average number of children each woman bore from six and a half to two. But these gains have since been reversed and all Iranian women are suffering under regressive legislation passed in 2015. Though, of course, some are suffering more than others.
As a sexual and reproductive health and rights advocate, I have been working with marginalised women's collectives in underserved districts of Tehran for five years. I have seen how laws like The Comprehensive Population and Exaltation of Family Bill (or Bill 315, as it is known) most directly and severely affect the poorest women: sex workers, those with drug abuse issues, rural, migrant and ethnic minority women – those who were highly dependent on state provision of contraception.
The first call for a reversal of Iran’s de facto two-child policy came in 2006, when President Ahmadinejad said the population should increase from 70 to 120 million, with women working less and devoting more time to their “main mission” of raising children. In 2012, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said the policy made sense 20 years ago, “but its continuation in later years was wrong,” because the country would face an aging and declining population “if the birth-control policy continues.”
