Iran, the U.S., and Government Control Over the Female Body
On September 13, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested in Tehran for allegedly wearing her headscarf too loosely.[1] Three days later, she was reported dead.[2] The Iranian police forces claimed that she died of heart failure, but the more likely explanation is that she was murdered by law enforcement.[3] Immediately after her death became publicized, protests erupted throughout Iran, and then throughout the world in solidarity.[4] Videos plastered social media of Iranian women cutting off all of their hair in support of Amini, showing their resistance to the oppressive hijab laws.[5] Nonetheless, this repressive effort by the Iranian government to control every aspect of a woman’s life in the name of religion is, of course, nothing new. For example, not only are there restrictions on women’s dress, but Iranian women also cannot get a divorce without a court order[6] and they cannot obtain a passport without their husband’s written approval,[7] among many other inequities in the law. While the enforcement of such policies has ebbed and flowed throughout Iranian history, it is clear that strict conservatism is on the rise in Iran.
Meanwhile, in the United States, on June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the much-anticipated case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.[8] The ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, taking away the constitutional right to an abortion.[9] This decision marks the first time that the Supreme Court has taken away a constitutional right, and it opens the door for the Court to eliminate other rights as well.[10] In fact, in his concurrence, Justice Thomas made it quite clear that the Due Process Clause has been applied too liberally by courts in the past, and that the Court “‘should reconsider all...substantive due process precedents’ to ‘correct the error.’”[11] Correcting that error, to use Justice Thomas’s terminology, would mean re-examining the cases that granted Americans a multitude of rights, like the right to contraception and the right to same-sex marriage.[12] These substantive due process freedoms are of the type that set the United States apart from countries like Iran. They show a respect for human dignity, diversity, and gender equality. While the political climate in the U.S. varies by region, this decision is characteristic of the rise of conservatism in the U.S. following Trump’s election and the conservative majority on Supreme Court that followed.
It would be gravely disrespectful and simplistic to make a direct comparison between the current events in Iran and the effects of the Dobbs decision in the United States. However, on a macro-level, the countries are both trending away from progress and modern conceptions of human rights and regressing towards old-school patriarchal conceptions of male dominance– they are just doing so on vastly differently scales. This parallel played out this October at Chicago’s federal plaza where two simultaneous protests occurred, with one for reproductive rights in the U.S. and one in support of women in Iran.[13] The day was dubbed the “Women’s Day of Action” rally.[14] While the display of solidarity is inspiring, it is also a harrowing sight. How can a country that prides itself on freedom and justice for all be making the same mistakes as a country which most of the world considers a repressive theocracy and major human rights abuser? The juxtaposition here may seem melodramatic, but the reality is stark: women’s rights over their own bodies are slowly regressing around the world, and the state of human rights in the U.S. looks much bleaker when put in context.
Emma Bellows is a staff member of Fordham International Law Journal Volume XLVI.
[1] Anisha Kohli, What to Know About the Iranian Protests Over Mahsa Amini’s Death, TIME (Sept. 24, 2022, 1:41 PM), https://time.com/6216513/mahsa-amini-iran-protests-police/.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] See USA TODAY, Iranian women cut hair in protest to death of Mahsa Amini, YouTube (Sept. 20, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQre0SHZFus.
[6] Andrew Hanna, Part 3: Iranian Laws on Women, The U.S. Inst. of Peace: The Iran Primer (Dec. 8, 2020), https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2020/dec/08/part-3-iranian-laws-women.
[7] Id.
[8] U.S. Supreme Court Takes Away the Constitutional Right to Abortion, Ctr. For Reprod. Rts., https://reproductiverights.org/case/scotus-mississippi-abortion-ban/.
[9] Id.
[10] Jeannie Suk Gersen, When the Supreme Court Takes Away a Long-Held Constitutional Right, The New Yorker: Daily Comment (June 24, 2022), https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/when-the-supreme-court-takes-away-a-long-held-constitutional-right.
[11]Explaining SCOTUS's Abortion Decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, League of Women Voters, https://www.lwv.org/blog/explaining-scotuss-abortion-decision-dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health organization#:~:text=On%20June%2024%2C%202022%2C%20the,the%20constitutional%20right%20to%20abortion (July 22, 2022).
[12] Id.
[13] Shardaa Gray, Protesters for Iran, women's rights join together in Chicago, CBS News Chicago, https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/iran-abortion-protest-chicago-federal-plaza/ (Oct. 8, 2022, 7:33 PM).
[14] Id.
This is a student blog post and in no way represents the views of the Fordham International Law Journal.