Turkey: Three-plus children for the economy

27 January 2025
Our new series returns to our Welcome to Gilead campaign, exploring global restrictions on women’s reproductive rights. This edition revisits the chapter on Turkey from our 2021 Welcome to Gilead report.

Like China and Iran, Turkey is no stranger to using reproductive policy to control population size. Following its War of Independence in the early 20th century, Turkish leaders instituted pronatal policies in a nationalist attempt to replace war casualties. Contraception, sterilisation, and even sharing contraception information was made illegal, and abortion was codified as a crime against “racial integrity”.

In the 1960s, however, Turkey joined many other countries in realising that population growth was a threat to economic development and changed its tune, providing free contraception and later legalising abortion. Again, it was economic growth, not women’s rights, that drove the agenda.

Continued: https://populationmatters.org/news/2025/01/turkey-three-plus-children-for-the-economy/

27.01.2025

Commentary

Justice and Development Party

Iran launches hotline to discourage abortions

Jan 9, 2025

Iran's health ministry has introduced a hotline aimed at dissuading citizens from having abortions as the theocratic system attempts to confront slowing population growth.

"Trained individuals help callers keep their pregnancies and decide against abortion," the head of the ministry's Center for Population Growth, Saber Jabari, said Thursday.

Continued: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202501099418

09.01.2025

Basij Medical Society

Center for Population Growth

hotline to discourage abortion

More Iranian women forced into illegal abortions

Hundreds of thousands of women seek illegal abortions every year in Iran, defying strict family planning laws enforced by the Islamist regime.

Elina Farhadi
Jan 6, 2025

Although Iranian authorities have widely restricted access to abortion in an attempt to reverse demographic decline, more women are going outside the law to end unwanted pregnancies.

According to figures from the Iranian Ministry of Health reported by the Khabaronline news website in June 2024, over 600,000 illegal abortions are performed annually in Iran.

Experts say poverty, joblessness, and lack of social security are contributing factors forcing women to undergo an abortion despite serious risks.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/more-iranian-women-forced-into-illegal-abortions/a-71229081

Jordan’s Abortion Conundrum

The country’s strict laws leave women with impossible choices and facing financial struggles, stigma and dangerous procedures

Meghan Davidson Ladly
November 29, 2024

Amal watches her children play on the living room floor of her house on a quiet street in a suburb of Jordan’s capital. As dusk settles over the sloping hills of Amman, she sinks into a sofa and lights a cigarette, adjusting her hijab.

“It is illegal, but you can’t know how I feel,” she says. “I couldn’t think of anything except getting rid of this pregnancy. Even my kids — I couldn’t think of them. And I knew I had to make a decision.”

Continued: https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/jordan-abortion-conundrum/

How Israel’s War in Gaza Ripped a Major Abortion Fund Apart

A nonprofit took a stand on Palestine. A senior employee resigned and published her account. Then the backlash started.

By Christina Cauterucci
Oct 14, 2024

It all started with an Instagram post. On a Monday in October 2023, Jade Hurley was looking for a way to acknowledge Indigenous Peoples Day, an alternative to Columbus Day celebrated by those who don’t consider the colonization of the Americas an occasion worth celebrating. As the communications manager at the D.C. Abortion Fund, Hurley was tasked with posting to the organization’s Instagram account, which has a modest audience of about 7,000 followers.

In DCAF’s Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours, Hurley reposted another organization’s graphic, which asserted that the Indigenous peoples of Guam, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Palestine are entitled to reclaim the land that colonizers stole from them or their ancestors.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/10/israel-gaza-palestine-abortion-fund-dc-tablet.html

14.10.2024

Commentary

Alisha Dingus

Allison Tombros Korman

Democrats Shouldn’t Isolate Abortion Access

Democratic leaders appear set on siloing abortion access from other critical issues—including the genocide in Gaza. That’s a mistake.

Anne Rumberger
August 19, 2024

About a thousand activists with the group Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws marched through downtown Chicago on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, chanting slogans like “One, two, three, four, fund abortions not war! Five, six, seven, eight, Israel is an apartheid state!”

Organizers designed the march, in part, to underscore to Democratic leaders — especially Vice President Kamala Harris — that they would do well to note the level of popular support for three key issues the party seems to have largely atomized: abortion access, queer rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

Continued: https://inthesetimes.com/article/democrats-abortion-gaza-genocide-queer-dnc

Iran steps up war on abortion with anti-abortion centers in 250 cities

July 29, 2024

Iran has established anti-abortion centers in 250 cities, preventing 4,700 abortions, according to a Health Ministry official.

In an interview with the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) on Saturday, Saber Jabbari-Farouji, head of Iran’s Health Ministry's Population Youth Department, disclosed that the centers are part of the "Nafas" intervention group.

The group operates in locations frequently visited by pregnant women contemplating abortion and collaborates with the likes of pregnancy diagnosis labs, gynecologists' offices, midwives, general practitioners, and the national health network, including hospitals, to deter a woman considering an abortion.

Continued: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202407278721

29.07.2024

Ali Khamenei

anti-abortion centers

anti-abortion patrols

Center for Strategic Research on Population

Family Protection and Youth Population Law

gender apartheid

Health Ministry's Population Youth Department

Saber Jabbari-Farouji

Turkey – Diyarbakır hospitals impose de facto ban on abortion

Public and private hospitals in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır refuse to carry out abortion operations, arguing it is “forbidden.” Abortion on demand has been legal until the 10th week of pregnancy since 1983 in Turkey.

Sunday July 14 2024

Public and private hospitals in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır province refuse to carry out abortion operations on demand, despite being legal.

In Turkey, abortion has been legal under Articles 5 and 6 of the Law on Population Planning since May 27, 1983, and is subject to the consent of the pregnant until the 10th week of pregnancy. Although the right to abortion on demand is guaranteed by law, in practice women may face various obstacles in the country.

Continued: https://www.duvarenglish.com/diyarbakir-hospitals-impose-de-facto-ban-on-abortion-news-64662

14.07.2024

News

abortion in Turkey

Health and Social Services Workers’ Trade Union

Law on Population Planning

Women's Human Rights Association

UAE to permit abortions in rape and incest cases in landmark legal reform

Experts say move is a progressive step that will protect women's health

Shireena Al Nowais
Jun 19, 2024

The UAE is to permit women to undergo abortions in cases where the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. The decision marks a key milestone in the UAE's evolving abortion laws, with experts saying it will serve to bolster the health and safety of women living in the Emirates.

The Cabinet Resolution No. (44) of 2024 related to the Medical Liability law states that abortion is allowed "if the pregnancy is the result of intercoCrimes and Penalties Lawurse with a female against her will, without her consent, or without adequate volition" and "if the person who caused the pregnancy is an ancestor of the woman or one of her mahram [ineligible for marriage] relatives".

Continued: https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/uae/2024/06/20/uae-to-permit-abortions-in-rape-and-incest-cases-in-landmark-legal-reform/

19.06.2024

News

abortion law reform

Byron James

Crimes and Penalties Law

Dr Paul Bosio

Ministry of Health and Prevention

rape and abortion

rape and incest exceptions

UAE Clarifies Abortion Rules, Procedures

New regulation calls for the establishment of committees to evaluate abortion requests on a case-by-case basis
OMNIA AL DESOUKIE
06/17/2024

The United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Health and Prevention announced new regulations on abortion last week, clarifying the cases in which a woman is allowed to terminate her pregnancy.

The new regulation allows women to request an abortion during the first 120 days of pregnancy. A committee will then examine the request, and if the committee finds a medical case for the abortion, the woman will be allowed to undergo an abortion. According to regulation, abortions will be performed only by specialist obstetrician-gynecologists in licensed healthcare facilities.

Continued: https://themedialine.org/by-region/uae-clarifies-abortion-rules-procedures/

17.06.2024