4 Journal of Pregnancy Table 4: List of fetal indications of therapeutic abortion in Iran. Acknowledgments (1) Osteogenesis imperfecta (2) Osteochondrodysplasia (4) Bilateral renal agenesis (5) Polycystic kidney (6) Multicystic dysplastic kidney (7) Potter syndrome (3) Osteopetrosis and infantile neuroaxonal dystrophy (8) Congenital nephrotic syndrome and hydrops (9) Severe bilateral hydronephrosis (10) Alpha thalassemia and hydrops fetalis (11) Thrombotic disorders (12) Trisomy 13, 18, 3, 16, and 8 (13) Anencephaly (14) Cat cry syndrome (15) Holoprosencephaly (16) Syringomyelia (17) Cranioschisis (18) Meningoencephalocele (19) Meningohydroencephalocele (20) Thanatophoric dysplasia (21) Cyclopia with holoprosencephaly (22) Ichthyosis congenita (23) Schizencephaly shows that thalassemia is now under the control of health care system in the country as reported before [10]. In three out of every ﬁve pregnancies with congenital abnormalities, consent for terminating the pregnancy could not be obtained as the diagnosis/application only occurred after 20 weeks indicating that early diagnosis and timely request would be essential to get the abortion permit. It is concluded that one in almost three pregnancies prenatally diagnosed with birth defect(s) is now legally terminated in Iran. Although this ﬁgure is acceptable at the current situation in the country, more eﬀorts should still be made to (a) convince the community authorities to give more possibility and ease for the termination of pregnancy for congenital anomalies, (b) improve the diagnostic facilities for early and timely diagnosis of fetal anomalies, (c) train med- ical staﬀ in the clinical indications of therapeutic abortion of birth defects, and (d) provide the necessary information to young couples about the suitable age of pregnancy and about folic acid consumption before and during pregnancy. Appendix See Tables 3 and 4. Conﬂict of Interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. The authors are grateful to research deputy of Tabriz Univer- sity of Medical Sciences and East Azerbaijan Legal Medicine Bureau for ﬁnancial support of this project. The authors acknowledge Dr. Heidar Fathizadeh of the regional statistics bureau for his assistance in access to the population data required for this paper. They also appreciate Mr. Mohammad Sadegh Khamnian for his helpful comments on the ﬁrst draft of the paper. References [1] A. Erfani and K. McQuillan, “Rates of induced abortion in Iran: the roles of contraceptive use and religiosity,” Studies in Family Planning, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 111–122, 2008. [2] “Essentials of islamic judiciary laws,” Iran News Paper, vol. 47, no. 1364, 1991, (Persian). [3] S. Sadr, Indications for Abortion in Iran, Tehran, Iran, 2002. [4] K. M. Hedayat, P. Shooshtarizadeh, and M. Raza, “Therapeutic abortion in Islam: contemporary views of Muslim Shiite schol- ars and eﬀect of recent Iranian legislation,” Journal of Med- ical Ethics, vol. 32, no. 11, pp. 652–657, 2006. [5] TRoCA, Tabriz Registry of Congenital Anomalies, 2011, http://troca.tbzmed.ac.ir. [6] M. Nojomi and A. Akbarian, “Burden of abortion: induced and spontaneous,” Archives of Iranian Medicine, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 39–45, 2006. [7] S. Liu, K. S. Joseph, and S. W. Wen, “Trends in fetal and infant deaths caused by congenital anomalies,” Seminars in Perinatology, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 268–276, 2002. [8] S. Bazmi, B. Behnoush, M. Kiani, and E. Bazmi, “Comparative study of therapeutic abortion permissions in central clinical department of Tehran Legal Medicine Organization before and after approval of law on abortion in Iran,” Iranian Journal of Pediatrics, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 315–322, 2008. [9] M. Ghadipasha and Z. Aminian, “The study of abortion licenses issued by legal medicine oﬃce in kerman,” Journal of Kerman University of Medical Sciences, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 147– 152, 2007, (Persian). [10] H. Aghajani, A. Samavat, M. Haghazali, F. Valizadeh, and G. Sarbazi, “Primary health care: an approach to community control of genetic and congenital disorders,” Iranian Journal of Public Health, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 113–114, 2009.