Today's Christian News Online - The Christian Post
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (JN 8:32)
Christian

Int'l Furor over Forced Abortion Case in China

[-] Text [+]

The international community is outraged and warns China it is watching closely the case of a Muslim Uyghur woman who is being forced against her will to have an abortion.

Arzigul Tursun, who lives in China’s far northwest region, is more than six months pregnant and is being hounded by authorities who want her to have an abortion. Tursun already has two children with her husband.

Late on Sunday, Tursun fled the hospital that she was staying at while awaiting her abortion. But she was tracked down by police Monday afternoon at a relative’s house and was again taken to the hospital for an abortion, according to Radio Free Asia.

“The police found my wife,” Nurmemet Tohtasin, the woman’s husband, said in a telephone interview from the Women and Children’s Welfare Hospital, to RFA. “My wife’s father was already at the hospital. They will probably do the abortion today.”

The village chief and party secretary had forced her husband to find Tursun after she escaped from the hospital on Sunday. Nurmemet took officials to two of Tursun’s relatives’ homes and to her parents’ home.

“They said if we don’t find Arzigul, they would take our house and our farmland,” he said.

Members of the U.S. Congress have expressed their outrage at the case that shows China’s brutal tactics in controlling its population, which numbers 1.3 billion.

"The Chinese government is notorious for this barbaric practice, but to forcibly abort a woman while the world watches in full knowledge of what is going on would make a mockery of its claim that the central government disapproves of the practice," Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), the House Ranking member on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said in a statement.

Smith wrote to China’s ambassador to Washington, Zhou Wenzhong, on Thursday to demand that “the nightmare of a forced abortion” be stopped. He also said the U.S. government and human rights group will be watching very carefully to what happens to Tursun and her family.

Under Chinese law, the majority Han population is only allowed to have one child, but Urban minority couples are allowed two children and rural farmers can have up to three children.

The case is complicated by the fact that Tursun has a rural household registration while her husband is registered in an urban area. Supporters of Tursun say that the abortion procedure could threaten her life.

This weekend’s runaway episode was the second in recent weeks for Tursun.

When she first heard that authorities wanted her to have an abortion, she ran away from her village of Bulaq to protect her unborn child, according to McClatchy News. But she returned to her village when officials threatened to seize her family’s land and property.

“We considered our two girls,” her husband said in a telephone interview with McClatchy. “If the house and properties were taken away, how would they live? So my wife came back home and went to the hospital.”

She was then taken to Gulja’s Water Gate Hospital in Yining near the China-Kazakhstan border, and guarded by village leaders to await her forced abortion.

Medical staffs say they were ready to perform the procedure since last week, but waited because of international protest about the abortion case.

China has had more than 400 million abortions in the past three decades, according to McClatchy.

Uyghurs (pronounced WEE-gers) is a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority living in Central Asia that has a large community in the People’s Republic of China. The ethnic minority group has a long and bitter history with the Chinese government with its demand for independence.

Most recent comments
  • Thu Nov 20, 2008 8:47 am : 0 : 0 Flag

    Why is the international communinity suddenly outraged when a Muslim is forced to abort? Christians have been forced to abort for decades, where was the outrage then?

  • Thu Nov 20, 2008 6:06 am : 0 : 0 Flag

    Why has this nation, with its barbarous ideals and atheistic ideology, benn granted MFN (most favored nation trade status) since the 70s by our country regardless of which party is on office? Two words, big business. Money, and big businesses love/craving of it. A nation that steals any technology it can from us whether in the business world or from our government.

  • Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:15 pm : 6 : 0 Flag

    Lord God, we ask You to intervene for this woman and her family! China has always done what they choose and when you kill 400M of your own people...you destroy the very fabric of your nation...US 35 Million babies since roe v wade...so many blessings from God destroyed..and we wonder the fall of man's foundations around this world....the LORD is shaking the earth and the heavens...praise GOD! SHAKE the nations Lord!!!!! Obama is being heralded as some "messiah" well, not him or anyone else is going to stop God's plans!!!! Come soon Lord Jesus!!!

  • Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:24 am : 1 : 6 Flag

    WAB: Obama has ten times the intelligence than George W. and will apply it ten times more ethically and morally.

    Oh, by the way, the proper grammer is "relocate HIM and his wife"

  • WAB
    Tue Nov 18, 2008 6:39 pm : 3 : 3 Flag

    I think we should 'abort' Obama in effigy - or just relocate he and his wife to China for a few years. I wonder what he'd do if he actually had a brain of his own.

  • Mon Nov 17, 2008 8:00 pm : 2 : 1 Flag

    http://tafkac.org/food/baby.eating/upi.html

    Nothing about China can surprise me after this

  • Mon Nov 17, 2008 7:30 pm : 3 : 0 Flag

    Another example of government intruding in the lives of the people; one day, it will all come to an end.

  • Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:07 pm : 14 : 3 Flag

    Where is the ACLU,? oop's forgot, This is to save a life.

Please help us to monitor our message boards by flagging abusive, spam, offensive, illegal, racist or libellous posts.

Comment on this story

Submit

Don't have a Christian Post ID? Signing up is easy. Click Here

Also on the CP | RSS
Submit Related NEWS TIPS & PHOTOS