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InterNations
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U.S. Stock Futures Fall; S&P 500 Poised for Slump

U.S. stock futures declined, indicating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index will drop for a seventh day, as the euro area’s leaders grappled with how to contain their region’s debt crisis.

(Bloomberg) LONDON - Fitch Ratings lowered Portugal's long-term rating to BB+ from BBB- with a negative outlook, while Moody's Investors Service cut Hungary's foreign- and local-currency bond ratings to Ba1 from Baa3 yesterday.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures expiring the same month lost 67 points, or 0.6 percent, to 11,167. U.S. equity markets will reopen today after yesterday's Thanksgiving break.

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Society

Iran's War On Abortion Rights, A Toxic Mix Of Theocracy And Demographic Panic

Ending a pregnancy has become a major complication, and a crime, for Iranian women who cannot or will not have children in a country wracked by socio-economic woes and a leadership.

photo of a young child surrounded by women in chadors

Iran's government wants to boost the birth rate at all costs

Office of Supreme Leader/ZUMA
Firoozeh Nordstrom

Keen to boost the population, Iran's Islamic regime has reversed its half-hearted family planning policies of earlier years and is curbing birth control with measures that include banning abortion.

Its (2021) Law to Support the Family and Rejuvenate the Population (Qanun-e hemayat az khanevadeh va javani-e jam'iyat) threatens to fine the women who want to abort, and fine, imprison, and dismiss the performing physician, if the pregnancy is not deemed to be life-threatening. The law also bans contraceptives.

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The measures are in line with the dictates of Iran's Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. He was already denouncing birth control policies by 2018-19, though conservative elements among Iran's rulers have always dismissed birth control as a piece of Western corruption.

Today, measures to boost families include land and credit incentives for young couples, but it is difficult to say how far they will counter a marked reluctance among Iranians to marry and procreate. Kayhan-London had an online conversation with individuals affected by the new rules in Iran.

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