China and Forced Abortions
Aug 31st, 2007 by Amanda
This makes me sick to my stomach:
Yang Zhongchen, a small-town businessman, wined and dined three government officials for permission to become a father.
But the Peking duck and liquor weren’t enough. One night, a couple of weeks before her date for giving birth, Yang’s wife was dragged from her bed in a north China town and taken to a clinic, where, she says, her baby was killed by injection while still inside her.
“Several people held me down, they ripped my clothes aside and the doctor pushed a large syringe into my stomach,” says Jin Yani, a shy, petite woman with a long ponytail. “It was very painful. … It was all very rough.”
Some 30 years after China decreed a general limit of one child per family, resentment still brews over the state’s regular and sometimes brutal intrusion into intimate family matters. Not only are many second pregnancies aborted, but even to have one’s first child requires a license.
Seven years after the dead baby was pulled from her body with forceps, Jin remains traumatized and, the couple and a doctor say, unable to bear children. Yang and Jin have made the rounds of government offices pleading for restitution — to no avail.
That’s just unforgivable. A few weeks before her due date she was forced to have an abortion. A procedure that not only murdered her baby, but caused health problems for the mom. Not only can she no longer have children, but she hasn’t had sex with her husband for years because it’s too painful. And the government is ruling against this couple, declaring that she consented to the abortion and that they had no right to have a child since it was officially conceived out of wedlock.
The worst part? China defends its policy because it has helped the fight against global warming. Yes, you read that correctly. Abortion helps global warming.
China, which rejects criticism that it is doing too little to confront climate change, says that its population is now 1.3 billion against 1.6 billion if it had not imposed tough birth control measures in the late 1970s.
The number of births avoided equals the entire population of the United States. Beijing says that fewer people means less demand for energy and lower emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.
Theoretically, forced abortion is illegal in China. But I think both of these stories suggest that it really isn’t, and that the Chinese government will turn a blind eye in an effort to control their population.
It just makes me sick.
Now you may hate me…
Which part makes you sick? The abortion or the forcing? (I know you are going to say, “both”)
Would you say taking control of population growth is not one of many measures to take against pollution and energy use (in particular fossil fuel energy use).
Don’t misunderstand me, forcing abortions is 100% wrong. However, so is forcing women to bear unwanted children.
I dont advocate this aspect of Chinas population control method, clearly education in birth control, safe sex, and a strong attitude towards population control among the chinese citizens is important (same with india and even here).
but you cant argue that population control is in fact one aspect of reducing energy consumption.
I knew this would come up, and I should have specified in the post. Yes, the answer is both. But being specific to this article, it’s the forcing. I am pro-life, but I can’t imagine that any rational pro-choice person would be okay with forced abortions. I’m drawing a distinct line between abortion and forced abortion here. Yes, I’m against both, but in this country, I’m fairly certain that while one is legal, the other is not.
This wasn’t intended to be an abortion debate…if that’s what you want, join in the comments here.
I am pro-choice and this is absolutely horrific. There’s really nothing to debate on this matter.
;o)
I don’t think any one would argue that a forced abortion is ever warranted.
This is indicative of the much larger problem China has with its continued and systematic human rights violations and abuses. I’d love to hear more people beat up on China on a more regular basis, instead of worrying about gay marriage and the possibility of a woman being elected president!
Priorities, my friends, priorities.
Yes. It’s horrific.
Now, imagine that everywhere you go tomorrow, EVERYWHERE, there are four-five times as many people. A one BR-bath apt. with 4-5 people. 16 people in a compact car, 32 in a mini-van.
I know it’s absurd, but try to imagine what that’s like, and then think about China and all its potential for bad, or good.
So there’s a problem. We can all agree on that. But what’s the solution? It’s no good to say, “Oh, well yeah forced abortion sucks, but since we’ve got so many people it’s really okay.”
“Now, imagine that everywhere you go tomorrow, EVERYWHERE, there are four-five times as many people. A one BR-bath apt. with 4-5 people. 16 people in a compact car, 32 in a mini-van.”
Isn’t that what it’s like in Japan? Yet, I don’t know of any stories like this coming from Japan.
This is not about concern for the globe, but merely an extension of the ideological power of communism and the desire to subjugate individual rights for the welfare of the “State”. This is just one of many, many abuses of power by China.
Isn’t that what it’s like in Japan? Yet, I don’t know of any stories like this coming from Japan.
As much as anything else, that’s probably a feature of Japan’s higher levels of education. In general, well-educated couples tend to have lower fertility rates - they realise that there’s more to life than having kids.
So to permanently reduce population levels, China would have to implement a comprehensive system of good education. It doesn’t have the resources to do that. It doesn’t have the teachers. Even if it did have both of these, the middle-term disruptive effects of improved education would make Tiananmen Square look like a stroll in the park.
Even if they had the resources, and even if they weren’t evil authoritarian gits who live in terror of their serfs freeing themselves, the education route probably wouldn’t take effect in time to stop some major disasters. China’s infrastructure is fighting a losing battle with age, overuse and shoddy construction. If the population increases too much further, it’ll knock China back into its very own Dark Ages.
The Chinese government does try to keep the birth rate under control by non-controversial means. The problem is that these approaches just don’t work. People like the couple in this article are so frantic to have kids that they’re happy to overlook the damage they’re doing to their country. No matter what non-violent approaches you put in place - differential taxation, criminal charges, you name it - a large proportion of people will have too many kids anyway. Any non-abortion approach is doomed to fail.
I guess what I’m trying to get across is that it’s no good to say, “Oh, well yeah massive overpopulation sucks, but since we don’t want to harm anyone it’s really okay”.
Nice to see a coherent discussion on this on what is a religiously oriented blog (even if it is mostly about one persons journey from fundamentalism to, shall i say, a more rational view of the world?).
Lifewish i think you are right for the most part. Education is the key. But it virutally impossible to implement. Why? Its not in the authorities best interest to educate the masses (I have TONS of quotes about this subject).
Education, true education, without political, religious, or authoritarian bias is true freedom. Sadly, this country is not encouraging it either. The latest and greatest (ask almost any public school teacher) is to teach facts without critical thinking. Its getting worse here, not better, I can’t imagine it will get better in china any time soon.
So besides education what could be done? Well instead of forcing a one child policy, encouraging it would be better. There are tons of PR guys who could pull this off. Using the media to make it feel gross, irresponsible, or stupid to have more than one child. Its a more immediate method. We do this here a lot, you only need to look as far as the latest fad to see it.
“People like the couple in this article are so frantic to have kids that they’re happy to overlook the damage they’re doing to their country.”
Ridiculous. China is headed toward a massive problem over the next 20 years as the gender imbalances that have been created by the “one child” policy come to fruition. In the short term they are concerned about overpopulation, but soon that trend will turn and their will be many more men than women, causing who knows what kinds of disasters. We can’t even predict them all simply because such a thing has never happened on such a scale.
The problems they face are only partly due to the amount of people within their borders. The lack of freedom and the communistic ideology is what has made their population struggle worse. Corrupt governments bankrupt people and force them into poverty and ignorance.
Ridiculous. China is headed toward a massive problem over the next 20 years as the gender imbalances that have been created by the “one child” policy come to fruition.
I completely agree. But what would their population look like if they hadn’t implemented this policy?
I’m not saying it’s a good policy, or even particularly well-thought-out - I’m just saying that they’re between several rocks and an assortment of hard places. They’re assholes, sure - but, taking this one area in isolation, I don’t feel their decision is as evil as it’s made out to be.
Or, to rephrase, their entire political structure is all fairly evil, and this policy is just one necessary consequence of that. Possibly it would be necessary even if the Chinese government weren’t assholes.