Abortion which midwives usually worked were relatively safe. In addition, some commentators have written that, despite improved medical procedures, the period from the 1930s until legalization also saw more zealous enforcement of anti-abortion laws, and concomitantly an increasing control of abortion providers by organized crime. Soviet Russia (1919), Iceland (1935) and Sweden (1938) were among the first countries to legalize certain or all forms of abortion. In 1935 Nazi Germany, a law was passed permitting abortions for those deemed "hereditarily ill", while women considered of German stock were specifically prohibited from having abortions. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth
Abortion in Iran that abortion might possibly be legal—only if, however, it was determined that the life of the mother and the fetus were both endangered if the pregnancy went through, and that the mother could be saved by an abortion. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a "fatwa" to this effect, allowing abortion in the first trimester for these special cases. The Therapeutic Abortion Act of 2005, passed by the Iranian parliament, stated that if the reason for an abortion was not one of the 61 listed disorders or abnormalities, the cases could be referred to the physician and then the organization, which would