Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Pregnancy Volume 2012, Article ID 574513, 4 pages doi:10.1155/2012/574513 Clinical Study Congenital Anomalies and Termination of Pregnancy in Iran Bahram Samadirad,1 Zhila Khamnian,2 Mohammad Bager Hosseini,3 and Saeed Dastgiri2 1 Research Centre of Iranian Legal Medicine Organization, 5166615739 Tabriz, Iran 2 Department of Community Medicine, National Public Health Management Centre (NPMC), School of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, 5166615739 Tabriz, Iran 3 Department of Neonatology, Pediatric Health Research Centre, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, 5166615739 Tabriz, Iran Correspondence should be addressed to Saeed Dastgiri, saeed.dastgiri@gmail.com Received 6 January 2012; Revised 25 February 2012; Accepted 28 February 2012 Academic Editor: Sinuhe Hahn Copyright © 2012 Bahram Samadirad et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The aim of this study was to document some epidemiological features of termination of pregnancy for birth defects in Iran. We studied 603 pregnant women who were diagnosed/recommended for the termination of pregnancy as having a fetus with some types of birth defect(s). Most women (87.2 percent) had at least one ultrasound examination. The proportion of other screening tests including amniocentesis and genetic tests were 2.8 and 4.6 percent, respectively. Of 603 women, 201 terminated the pregnancy giving a prevalence rate of 33.3 percent (CI 95%: 29.6–37.6). The remaining 402 subjects were unable to get the permission for abortion because of untimely diagnosis/application for termination (20th week of pregnancy and/or later). Forty-eight percent of termination of pregnancies was performed before the 18th week of pregnancy. Neural tube defects, limb deformation, hydrops fetalis, hydrocephaly, and chromosomal anomalies including Down syndrome accounted proportionally for about 65 percent of defects eligible for abortion in the region. Although the rate of termination of pregnancy for birth defects is acceptable at the current situation in the country, more eﬀorts should still be made to convince the community authorities to give more possibility and ease for the termination of pregnancy for congenital anomalies. 1. Introduction Therapeutic abortion is deﬁned as intentional termination of pregnancy performed or authorized by a physician in order to save the mother’s life and health. Termination of pregnancy is legally allowed in Iran if three specialist phy- sicians conﬁrm that the outcome of pregnancy may be harm- ful, for any reason, for mother/family during pregnancy or after birth. The reasons for this termination include the fol- lowing circumstances: (a) complications during the preg- nancy endangering mother’s health and (b) termination of pregnancy due to major malformation of fetus [1, 2]. According to the current laws in Iran, the permission for termination is only issued before the 20th week of pre- gnancy. According to the country’s current religious rules and traditions, it is believed that fetal viability occurrs after the 20th week, and it would not then be allowed to abort the fetus after this time [3, 4]. Currently, in Iran, one of the main reasons for termi- nation of pregnancy is congenital anomalies. Many of the serious maternal and fetal conditions are now easily per- mitted for abortion in the country (Tables 3 and 4) [2, 4]. In addition to those conditions, if three specialist physicians conﬁrm that the outcome of pregnancy may be harmful for any other reason to mother/family during pregnancy or after birth, the abortion will also be permitted even if it is not in- cluded in the list. The aim of this study was to describe the epidemiological proﬁle of induced abortions in women with birth defects in the northwest of Iran during 2010. 2. Methods Tabriz Registry of Congenital Anomalies (TRoCA) covers an annual average of 20000 births in the northwest of Iran, including live births and stillbirths [5]. As for current screening programme and pregnancy checkups in Iran, all pregnant women are routinely examined in public or private clinics by a gynecologist, obstetrician, or midwife. Ultrasound examination is one of the routine diagnostic tests