Statistics and Trends
The abortion rate in Iran is contested, and many surveys on the topic land with estimated numbers as opposed to hard data. This is due not only to the inherent difficulty in reaching all populations of Iran, which is a diverse country with large groups of the poor and rural, but also because of the sensitivity of the issue; especially in highly religious groups, the questioning about abortion trends is difficult, and the on-and-off receipt of honest answers has the potential to skew data in a way that makes real conclusions rather vague.
The abortion rate does vary significantly among Iran's provinces, but estimates include .26 lifetime abortions per Iranian woman, an estimated 73,000 a year, 27 abortions per 1000 women and 7.5 abortions per 1000 married women, and 11,543 abortions annually in Tehran, the nation's capitol. Interestingly, these statistics are as scholarly accepted as other quite dissimilar ones, such as one study's claim that more than a thousand unsafe abortions "take place every day in Iran" and another that reports that 100,000 younger women have illegal or induced abortions annually. The exact numbers on abortion in Iran are thus unknown, but there are some trends in the practice that have been widely reported and verified.
All over the world, there is a negative correlation between the use of contraceptives and the abortion rate; as the world adapts to new and accessible technologies developed for family planning and reproductive health, Iran is one of many nations that has found a lower rate of abortion in those areas that have higher rates of contraceptive use, which accounts for governmental acceptance and support of family planning and sexual health programs for the young. Additionally, ardent religious objections against the practice of abortion have become less legitimate in the eyes of many, especially in the middle and higher classes of Iran, as developments such as prenatal genetic testing make abortion more of a viable option in the case of a difficult pregnancy.
Read more about this topic: Abortion In Iran
Famous quotes containing the words statistics and/or trends:
“July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“Thanks to recent trends in the theory of knowledge, history is now better aware of its own worth and unassailability than it formerly was. It is precisely in its inexact character, in the fact that it can never be normative and does not have to be, that its security lies.”
—Johan Huizinga (18721945)