Iran Lawmaker Says Women Should Not Be Treated by Male Doctors
A member of Iran’s parliament says based on Islamic norms Iranian women should not have to go to male gynecologists and obstetricians for treatment.
A member of Iran’s parliament says based on Islamic norms Iranian women should not have to go to male gynecologists and obstetricians for treatment.
The deputy chair of parliament’s health committee, Mohammad Pakmehr, said on Saturday that authorities are taking steps so “even in exceptional cases, our women do not have to go to a male doctor.”
His remarks echoed a petition by the hardline news website Fars to prohibit the presence of male doctors and nurses from entering delivery rooms in Iran’s hospitals.
The petition has collected about 35,000 signatures in about 10 days and still is counting.
The petitions page of the Fars news agency, affiliated to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, is designed with a maximum target of 50,000 signatures that Fars claims it would be enough to make the case considered for a public discussion in Iran’s parliament.
The petition says it is to protect the rights of Muslim women of the Islamic Republic. “It is my right to give birth to my child in an environment free from sins”, read the last sentence of the text.
In November 2020, Iran’s Leader Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa banning male surgeons from performing cosmetic procedures on women. Such religious decrees by top clerics are binding in Iran and must be followed by the country’s medical society.
Hassan Marashi, the secretary general of the centrist Executives of Construction Party told the economic website Eghtesad News on Tuesday that Rouhani should have resigned as his government was formed based on the idea of holding a dialogue with the United States, but Iran's foreign policy needed to change track in 2018 after Donald Trump left the JCPOA.
"When diplomacy failed, there was no reason for Iran continuing diplomacy," Marashi said. Meanwhile,Marashi acknowledged that the pull-out by Trump was a hard blow to the Rouhani administration. It also emboldened Rouhani's political rivals to start attacking him.
"I told the Supreme Leader that we needed to change course after Trump's pull-out, and then I heard that Rouhani had suggested that he should resign, but the leader did not deem the decision fit for the situation," Marashi added.
In another development, while Rouhani's hardliners have been demanding to put him on trial for his failure to sort out the country's economic and foreign relations problems during his presidency, another reformist figure has suggested that he should welcome a trial.
"I would have welcomed the trial if I were him, " said Mohammad Ali Abtahi the chief of staff of former President Mohammad Khatami in an interview with the Iranian Labour News Agency ILNA on Tuesday, adding that the call for Rouhani's trial is a blame game to divert attention from the new government's failure in solving the country's economic problems.
Abtahi added that the lawmakers who found their way to the parliament with revolutionary slogans have not been able to bring about any positive change and the economic crisis has been deepening on daily basis during the past six months.
"They have also not managed to solve the problem the issue of nuclear negotiations and the markets are still waiting for a positive sign from Vienna, and this is against the Majles and the administration's claims about separating the fate of the country's economy from what happens in the course of the negotiations,” Abtahi argued.
Speaking of responsibility about the current situation addressed both to President Rouhani and former Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, former government spokesman Ali Rabiei, who is a swell informed veteran intelligence ministry official, summarized what Iran's hardliners call "the current situation"in his Telegram Channel and on the proreform Fararu news website.
Rabiei highlighted Iran's current situation as "the undesirable situation of economic hardships that make life difficult for decent Iranians, an unprecedented inflation worsened by the instability of Iran’s currency and other markets since 2018, widespread poverty that defies all the revolutionary slogans, the social fatigue and insecurity felt by various walks of life in Iran, a rise in emigration by elite Iranians, as well as a decline in respect for revolutionary values."
Rabiei also pointed out that decline in political participation is so bad “that in a city such as Tehran only around 7 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the 2020 parliamentary election and in some cities the number of votes cast for the winner was barely higher than the number of those who worked at the polling station."
"Add to that the loss of Iran's geopolitical advantage, having no place in the international economy and depriving the nation of the opportunities international economy and modern technology can offer," Rabiei stressed.
