Iran urges baby boom with population aging
July 31st 2012
Iran’s new message to parents: Get busy and have babies. In a major reversal of once far-reaching family planning policies, authorities are now slashing its birth-control programs in an attempt to avoid an aging demographic similar to many Western countries that are struggling to keep up with state medical and social security costs.
The changes – announced in Iranian media last week – came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the country’s wide-ranging contraceptive services as “wrong.” The independent Shargh newspaper quoted Mohammad Esmail Motlaq, a Health Ministry official, as saying family planning programs have been cut from the budget for the current Iranian year, which began in March.
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Ali Reza Mesdaghinia, the deputy health minister, told the semiofficial Fars news agency on Sunday that population control programs “belonged to the past.”
Read the entire article: Huffington Post
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