Debates on Down Syndrome Screening in Iran

Recently, fetal aneuploidy screening, also wronglymentioned as Down syndrome screening, and legal abortionhaveraised attentionsandbeen a hot topic in Iran. Thedebates have strongly affected the "population youth andfamily support" bill of the Joint Commission of the IslamicParliament of Iran which is going to severely restrict prenatalscreening and legal abortion. So, we have discussedfacts about prenatal screening in Iran and other countriesin a paper entitled review of prenatal aneuploidy screeninguptake rate and trends in Iran, and developed countries in thepresent journal, and here discuss about the related misinformationin recent debates.Previously, there was a legislation approved by the parliamentabout therapeutic abortion in 2005 which allowedtermination of pregnancies that threatened the mother’slife, or fetuses with major anomalies or diseases that wouldcause many sufferings for the mother. Prenatal screeninghadstarted even before this legislation but itwassince 2013that a governmental guideline about screening chromosomalaneuploidies was released with the Ministry of Health,which had periodic revisions, by the last version belongingto 2020.

Debates on Down Syndrome Screening in Iran Keywords:

Down Syndrome , Prenatal Diagnosis , Induced Abortion