China's Policy Should Be 'All Children,' Not One or Two
The sheer horror of China's policy of forced abortion on women who become pregnant with a second child is tortuous. The number of unborn Chinese children — overwhelmingly girls — who have been aborted is staggering. The brutality of the means by which countless Chinese women are subject to abortion surgery is sub-human.
It's welcome news that China has now decided to "allow" women to have two children. But the costs of the past nearly four decades of forced abortion are almost too painful to consider.
Here is how The Washington Post's Simon Denyer describes but one incident of a policy that, between 1979 and 2013, took the lives of more than 330 million unborn Chinese little ones:
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His wife was seven months pregnant with their second child when the group of people barged into his home and took her away. He followed them to the local hospital, where — against medical advice and despite his pleadings — they jammed a needle into her belly. "They grabbed my wife's body like they were grabbing a pig, four or five people holding her hands and legs and head, and injected a shot into her belly," the man said, asking not to be named for fear of retribution. "Neither my wife nor I signed any consent form." Ten hours later, she gave birth to a boy, wriggling and faintly crying. But the doctors in southern Hunan province would not even let her hold the dying infant, the husband said, putting the baby in a plastic bag and instructing him to pay a cleaner a small sum to bury it on a nearby hill.
Data released by China's National Family Planning Commission, as reported by China Daily, show that "13 million abortions are performed each year, for an average rate of 35,000 abortions per day." It is noteworthy that given these data come from China's Communist government, it is possible, if not likely, the numbers cited are low. And, too, many, if not the great majority, of these are forced.
The result of this hell-engendered policy are massive. Millions of Chinese women experience severe physical and mental health problems. Roughly 200 million have been sterilized. According to 2013 U.S. State Department report, "The Chinese government's birth limitation policy and a cultural preference for sons, create a skewed sex ratio of 118 boys to 100 girls in China, which served as a key source of demand for the trafficking of foreign women as brides for Chinese men and for forced prostitution."
