FALSE: Hillary Clinton Claimed China “Used” to Force Women to Have Abortions. It Still Does

International   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Oct 20, 2016   |   10:58AM   |   Beijing, China

At last night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made clear where they stand on abortion. Clinton reiterated her support for legalized abortion through all nine months, including partial-birth abortions, while Trump promised to appoint pro-life judges to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In responding to a question about late-term abortions, some may have noticed that Clinton, a pro-abortion Democrat, briefly mentioned the problem of forced abortions in China.

This is what Clinton said: “You know, I’ve had a great honor of traveling across the world on behalf of our country. I’ve been to countries where governments either forced women to have abortions like they used to do in China or forced women to bear children like they used to do in Romania.”

The problem with Clinton’s statement is that she used the past tense to indicate that forced abortions are not happening in China anymore. Human rights advocates say they still are occurring.

Started in 1980, China’s pro-abortion One Child Policy has resulted in severe human rights abuses including forced abortions. 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.

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Last year, China announced that it was ending its abusive One Child Policy in favor of a more permissive two-child limit. This could have been the reason Clinton referred to forced abortions in the past tense. However, many believe the new two-child policy has not stopped forced abortions.

Reggie Littlejohn, one of the top human rights activists exposing the gendercide that takes place in China through her organization Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, said the new policy is little different than the One Child Policy.

“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.

In August, the BBC published an interview with a Chinese Communist Family Planning Official about the new two-child policy. According to the report, couples who have third children still face coercion (including fines as high as ten times a family’s annual salary, according to Littlejohn) and may be forced to abort their unborn child if they cannot pay.

“The new policy does not ban forced abortions; it merely says that couples can have two children,” Bill Donohue of the Catholic League explained. “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.”

There are more than 13 million abortions a year, or 1,500 an hour, in China, according to government researchers. No on knows exactly how many are coerced or forced. LifeNews has reported several horrific accounts when Chinese women were forced to abort their unborn babies as late as nine months because of its One Child Policy.

Pro-life advocate Sarah Terzo, on her blog, recalled one of the most brutal incidents that occurred in China under the pro-abortion, anti-human rights policy. The force abortion report was presented to a U.S. Congressional committee in 2011:

“On December 13, 2007 Mrs. Dong (34 years old) from  Wutong Town, Yongtai County, Fuchou City was pregnant with unplanned twin babies for almost 9 months. She was working in Ganzhe Town, Minhou County, Fuchou Province together with her husband.

Unfortunately, her pregnancy was discovered by the local Family-Planning Office.

At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon she was taken to the local health center forcibly. Without the agreement or signature of Mrs. Dong or her family, she was held by more than 10 people and injected Ethacridine Lactate at about 5 o’clock.

The family-planning officials declared that they would be responsible for any death. The twin babies struggled for a long time in their mother’s uterus and died in the end.Until 9:30 in the evening of December 14, she was still waiting to induce the dead babies. The local government blocked the event tightly and forbid anyone interviewing the victim. Until now her health condition is still unknown…”

Clinton is wrong that forced abortions are no longer a problem in China. They still are occurring, and no good will come from claiming that they are not. U.S. leaders must not only continue to raise awareness about this horrific problem but also urge Communist China to abandon its abusive family planning policies.

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