Yesterday, President George W. Bush met with human rights activist Chen Guangcheng his wife Yuan Weijing, and their son and daughter at his private club at the Bush Institute.
Before the event, Chen and his family were honored at ChinaAid’s annual banquet, where he received the 2013 “Defender of Freedom Award.” Chen also participated in an online talk, where he discussed how pervasive the forced-abortion one-child policy is in China.
Chen said 130,000 women in his home region of China alone were victims of forced abortions and another 600,000 family members, friends and neighbors have been arrested for hiding and helping these pregnant women.
Chen gave a brief overview of the Chinese communist government and said that while some may be under the impression that forced abortions only happen for those who have had more than one child, it’s simply not true. If a family hasn’t obtained a birth permit, whether it’s their second child or their first one, the women are kidnapped and taken to a hospital where they are forced to have their babies killed.
Some of those women are even into their eighth and ninth months of their pregnancies, he added.
“You literally have got to have permission from the government to have your own child,” he said.
Having this abuse occur around him drove Chen to start a study in 2005 that documented the 130,000 pregnant women who were forced to abort their babies and the 600,000 family members, neighbors and friends who were tortured and arrested for helping the women to escape the abortions.
Because of these acts, he said the respect for babies and human life is decreasing in China.
“The respect of life among the common people is on the verge of extinction,” he said.
