One of the world’s most successful family planning programs was nurtured in an unexpected place — Iran — and with the encouragement of the most unlikely leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.

In the mid-80s Iran had one of the highest birthrates in the world; in 20 years its population had doubled.

Then came one of the most astonishing reversals of population growth in history, American science writer Alan Weisman relates in his new book Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?

It was remarkable because, unlike China’s oppressively enforced one child policy, Iran’s was voluntary. The key? Free birth control.

Women, who had recently been encouraged to have nine babies, were now informed through banners, billboards and television ads: “One is good. Two is enough.”

Doctors and teams of university health workers traversed the country on horseback, dispensing birth control. Women, who didn’t need their husbands consent to use contraceptives, responded immediately. Those content with the size of their families asked for tubal ligations.

Education essential tool

If women wanted to have 10 children, they were free to go ahead. But they understood that if they limited family size, they could have a better standard of living and greater chance of educating the children they did have.

Women especially wanted their daughters to be better educated. In 1975 about one-third of Iranian women were literate. By 2012, the rate of female enrolment in university was similar to Canada’s, about 60 per cent.

The program had one compulsory element: couples about to marry had to attend premarital classes in the mosques or health clinics where they went for blood tests, where sex education and contraception were taught.

Demographers could hardly believe the turnaround. Little more than a decade later, Iran won the United Nations Population Award for the world’s most progressive and effective family planning.

Iran’s voluntary program, with free birth control, should be a model for the world as it grapples with stunning population growth.

One million more people are added to the planet every 4 and a half days, Weisman says in an interview.

“The brilliance of Iran’s family planning program was that it pointedly didn’t tell people how many children they should have. It told them how much it costs to raise and feed and educate kids.”

Weisman traveled to 21 countries to research Countdown, his fifth book. His previous book, The World Without Us, has been translated into 27 languages. His gift as a writer with a love of science is in drawing links for readers on how everything in our world is connected — in this case, population, consumption and the environment.

He knew China’s approach to population control was too coercive to appeal to most of the rest of the world. And if families adopted a one-child policy, the world’s population would swiftly revert back to 1.9 billion, where it was in 1900. “But you could have two children and that seems to satisfy people. I needed to know why that kind of approach worked.”

He proposes that reducing our “huge stomping footprint”— by following a European model of more modest consumption — would surely benefit the 7.2 billion people on Earth today. But it’s not likely to happen. To ensure human survival, Weisman argues, the world’s population cannot go past 10 billion — all of them still expelling waste, releasing carbon dioxide and demanding living space, food and fuel.

If we don’t voluntarily reduce population growth, he warns, nature will see to it. We will face famine, wars and climate chaos. Already, one scientist tells him, we are using all the cropland we’ll ever have. How will it be possible to feed two billion more?

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“Do we have the will and foresight to make decisions for the sake of descendents we will never know?” Weisman writes.

The pleasure in reading Countdown is in the interplay of interviews with experts and with everyday working people around the world, all trying to figure out the size of family they want. Even the experts reveal themselves as a humane and committed lot.

One Japanese economist — musing on the possibility of a future culture that consumes less and achieves prosperity without growth — says wistfully, “I wish we were wise enough to downsize gracefully and intelligently.”

In Niger, Weisman meets a village chief who has 17 children and has lost at least that many more, most through malnutrition. He married his first wife when she was 12.

In Palestine, Weisman discovers big families are desired because parents believe they will lose some children to imprisonment and death.

Iranian success under attack

Weisman describes creative education programs, featuring street theatre and other custom tools, to help women space childbirth with at least two-year gaps. Educated, enabled women, Weisman concludes, may be the “most effective contraceptive of all.”

For all the applause Iran earned globally for its success, that story does not end well. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a doubling of the country’s population. He didn’t get much traction. The preference for families of one or two children was now firmly imbedded in the culture and women derisively rejected his plan.

So Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei added weight to that proposal. Concerned about how to support an aging citizenry, he too said Iran’s population has to double. A new state program encouraged larger families.

Marriageable age was lowered, and there are reports of hundreds of girls under 10 forced to marry.

The greatest setback? Premarital sex education classes and free birth control were cancelled.

Alan Weisman will be speaking at Evergreen Brick Works on November 20 at 7 p.m.

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