China College Forces Pregnancy Tests on Students, Abortion Worries

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 21, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 21
, 2007

Beijing, China (LifeNews.com) — China has long been at the center of forced abortion controversies with its one-child policy that prohibits families there from having additional children. Now, news that a college in the Asian nation is forcing its female students to submit to pregnancy tests is furthering those fears.

Officials at the technical college in Urumqi, the capital of the far western region of Xinjiang, are defending the compulsory pregnancy tests as benefiting both the college and the students who attend.

Urumqi officials say they have been using the forced pregnancy testing system for years and that students who test positive are forced to leave the college.

"We are a closed boarding school. Every year we ask new students to take routine health checks. The pregnancy tests are just a part of that. This is a duty toward the students and families," one unnamed college spokesman told Beijing News.

The school has students as young as 17 but most would be considered college-aged students in the United States. Girls aged 17 and 18 comprised about 80 percent of the incoming freshman class.

The News indicated that the girls were herded into a hall on campus and they were forced to give urine samples to doctors present to conduct the pregnancy tests.

"If a student with an abnormal result is discovered, doctors will report it immediately to the school’s student board," Beijing News said.

Some of the students who test positive voluntarily quit the school while others are later forced to leave. Observers worry the policy will lead more women in China to have coerced abortions to solve their pregnancy "problems."

Other students are borrowing urine from classmates to get around the policy and they told the Beijing newspaper they don’t like the forced testing.

"The idea of being tested as soon as entering the school makes me feel very uncomfortable," the paper quoted Xiao Tang, a new student, as saying.

"It’s a big loss of face to be tested pregnant," student Xiao Ping said.

China instituted the coercive family planning policy in 1979 and Chinese women and families have been the victims of an intense campaign ever since.

It has also caused a myriad of other problems as the Asian nation is seeing it’s population tilt towards the old and there may not be enough younger workers to provide for its elderly citizens.

China is also seeing its male-female ratio worsening as its people use infanticide and sex-selection abortions to give birth to boy babies.

China currently has a male-female ratio of 119-100 while the number is closer to 103-100 in most industrialized nations. The figure is as high as 130-100 in some rural areas where a preference for boys is stronger to carry on the family name and work the family farm.

As a result of the gender imbalance, large numbers of Chinese man are finding it difficult to get married. The general imbalanced has also caused an increase in crime, selling of girl babies, prostitution and forcing women into sexual slavery or domestic positions.

Some girls are even sold or given away in order for Chinese families to have one son to comply with the family planning rules.

Chinese couples determined to have a son easily get around the new laws as a black market has sprung up of people with ultrasound machines in the trunks of cars or house closets are willing to divulge the sex of an unborn baby for a price.

Ironically, China distributed ultrasound machines to local clinics on a wide scale after the coercive family planning policy was instituted to ensure women were not pregnant and violating the one-child program.