The governments of all countries take care of their nations. They solve or at least try to solve all the kinds of problems, including economic, politic, cultural, health etc. Very often the solution of one question requires the changes in other spheres of social life. It happened that in such countries as China and Iran the economy was under the risk of decline because of the high number of population.
Therefore, special family planning programs, aimed to decrease and control the birth rate were set. In China, the government allowed its citizens to have one child, in some cases two and three. Only one childe is allowed in cities, two in rural territories and three is the number of children of ethnic minorities. One may say that such a policy is rather severe. However, it is the explanation why not only contraceptives, but abortions are permitted there. Because of the increase of population the economic situation in Iran became worse too.
In order to cope with this the government worked out a family planning program which was and still remains not typical of Islamic countries. Population policy became really important after the war with Iraq, when the economy system of Iran needed recovery. Later, the government refused to support families with many children and restricted the number of children one family was allowed to have to three. Besides, it started to support senior citizens, so that parents wouldn’t be motivated to have more children as a source of old age security. The impressive fact is that in 1990 the High Judicial Council declared that sterilization of men and women was not against Islamic principles or existing laws.
The question is what reaction of other Islamic countries this act caused? As we can see, sometimes the economy of the country demands the decrease of population. The results of such policy may be different. Everything depends on the government, its actions, and people’s reaction.
