China Not “Ending” Human Rights Abuses, Forced Abortions Will Continue Under Two-Child Policy

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 29, 2015   |   12:22PM   |   Beijing, China

Don’t get too excited over the news that China is “ending” it’s one-child policy that prohibits couples from having more than one child. Although the Asian nation is moving to a two child policy for everyone in China, rather than only allowing two children per couple for rural families, a top human rights activist tells LifeNews that the massive abuses such as forced abortions will continue.

According to China’s official news service run by the Communist government, China is reportedly abolishing the draconian pro-abortion one child policy. Started in 1980, the policy, which is the most severe in the world, has resulted in severe human rights abuses. Family planning officials frequently jail couples who refuse to comply, sentence them to house arrest or labor camps, revoke jobs or governmental support, use physical harassment or violence and often target other family members.

There are more than 13 million abortions a year, or 1,500 an hour, in China, according to government researchers. That’s thanks in large part to the one-child policy — which encourages abortions and results in forced abortions and sex-selection abortions.

Despite the apparent good news that China is moving to a two-child policy, Reggie Littlejohn, one of the top human rights activists exposing the gendercide that takes place in China, tells LifeNews.com that people are celebrating too soon.

Littlejohn says the move to a two-child limit “comes as no surprise, given the demographic disaster China now faces as a result of its One Child Policy.

“However, instituting a two-child policy will not end forced abortion, gendercide or family planning regulations in China.  Couples will still have to have a birth permit for the first and the second child, or they may be subject to forced abortion,” Littlejohn said. “The core of the One Child Policy is not whether the number of children the government allows.  It’s the fact that the government is setting a limit on children, and enforcing this limit coercively.  That will not change under a two-child policy.  The One Child Policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be abolished.”

“Women will still be forcibly aborted under a universal 2-child policy.  We need to keep up the pressure until China abandons all coercive population control,” Littlejohn added.

Meanwhile, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League said that China has been forced to modify the policy from one to two children because the one-child policy has decimated its population.

“Since 1979, most parts of China, and most married couples, have been subjected to a one-child policy, but now the Communist government is dropping it. Ironically, it is doing so for the same reason it adopted it in the first place: demographic concerns. The policy was initiated because of the fear that unrestrained population growth would impair economic wellbeing. Now it is being nixed because of fear that low fertility rates threaten a labor shortage, which, in turn, impairs economic wellbeing,” he explained.

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Donohue continued: “The Chinese Communists, of course, never address the morality of abortion, forced or elected. Human rights groups such as the United Nations and Amnesty International, as well as feminist organizations, object to the coercive aspects of a one-child policy, and to residual issues, but all of them are quite content with the morality of abortion, per se.”

Donohue also cautioned that the new two-child policy will have the same forced abortions and human rights abuses as before.

“The new policy does not ban forced abortions; it merely says that couples can have two children,” he said. “Which means that the government will have to continue its practice of monitoring a woman’s menstrual cycle and fining those who are pregnant with their third child. If they are unable to pay, they will be dragged to a local clinic and injected with a lethal drug.”

Ma Jian, a Chinese author, describes what happened to a woman with an unauthorized pregnancy:

“For two days she writhed on the table, her hands and feet still bound with rope, waiting for her body to eject her murdered baby. In the final stage of labor, a male doctor yanked her dead fetus out by the foot, then dropped it into a garbage can. She had no money for a cab. She had to hobble home, blood dripping down her legs and staining her white sandals red.”

As she points out, this is why China has the highest rate of female suicide in the world.

Before the announced policy change today, Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, one of the leading pro-life and human rights advocates in Congress, puts the one-child policy in perspective.

“In 1980 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party sent an open letter to party members setting forth its plan to embark on a national one-child policy,” Smith said. “What came out of that letter? A cruel and inhumane policy, a human rights violation that is, in scope and seriousness, the worst human rights abuse in the world today. No other government policy anywhere else in the world systematically punishes, abuses, and violates women so grossly as this.”

Smith said the policy has made it so brothers and sisters are illegal and children are growing up in a society with no aunts and uncle because the one-child policy has now been around for a generation.

The policy is unlike any other in the world in that it requires all women to obtain a birth permit before becoming pregnant and children of unwed mothers are subjected to abortions. And it monitors the reproductive cycles of all women of childbearing age through a system of mandatory, regular, and crudely invasive physical check-ups.

He says the policy has created an “atmosphere of fear” where anonymous pregnancy informants spy on citizens.

“The brave pregnant woman who refuses to give in is usually detained and beaten – or, if she goes into hiding, her relatives are detained and beaten. Families that succeed in hiding an “out-of-plan” pregnancy are punished with fines up to ten times the average annual income,” he explained.

Smith said the abortions have resulted in a policy of “gendercide” where more than 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. This has created a bachelor society of men who will be unable to marry and has given rise to more crime, sex trafficking, prostitution, and other problems.

He said the policy has resulted in a sky-high suicide rate for Chinese women who face such a brutal and terrorizing regime.

Smith said those who don’t believe the one-child policy is resulting in forced abortions need only look at the numerous media reports, reports from Chinese people who have fled the country, and human rights activists monitoring the situation.

“The violence of the one-child policy is absolutely ongoing. This year there are reliable reports of large scale and violent abortion enforcement campaigns in Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi provinces,” he said.

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