Unemployment and Poverty Lead to Widespread Abortion in Iran

According to a November 7 article published by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), there has been an alarming increase in abortions in Khuzestan, especially in Arab-settled areas.

Issues like unemployment, the rising cost of housing, deprivation, and a difficult life situation, has caused a prevalence of abortion in this province, which is ignored by the regime’s officials in Khuzestan.

More than 40 percent of the population in Khuzestan’s Arab-settled areas are out of work with their families living below poverty line, according to official figures.

Gholamreza Sharafi, Abadan’s representative in regime’s Parliament, said that more than 50 percent of Arabs in the province are unemployed. He states that the unemployment rate in some cities, like Hoveyzeh, now reaches as high as 70 percent.

“Such an inappropriate life situation along with numerous other problems has led to the widespread abortion among the families,” said the NCRI.

Human rights activists have quoted a nurse working in a midwifery clinic in Southern Ahwaz, according to Al-Arabiya Farsi on November 4. Requesting anonymity, she said that just in the clinic where she’s been working, she has witnessed 90 induction abortions carried out without legal permissions. “The abortions are carried out with parental consent and only by giving a written agreement and paying an amount of $250 - $330.” She added, “We are asked by the parents to carry out the abortions not because there’s a problem with the mother or the fetus but solely for such reasons as poverty, deprivation or being jobless,” the nurse added. She said that when asked, the abortion applicants stated that reason why they wanted to abort their unborn babies was that “the father is out of work, we live in a rental house and we have a couple of kids whose necessities we can’t afford to provide.”

According to the NCRI, “By Ignoring and not paying attention to the issue of widespread abortion in the province, the regime leaders and officials are actually revealing the other side of the plundering, astronomical frauds and wasting away the country’s resources in their war against the people in the region, the disasters we will continue to witness in Iran as long as this regime is in power.”

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