Congressional Cmte OKs Olympics Resolution on China’s Forced Abortions
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 24, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A Congressional committee has approved a resolution calling on China to end its policy of forcing women who violate its one-child family planning program to have abortions. The resolution comes just two weeks before the Asian nation kicks off the Summer Olympics.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee has unanimously approved legislation calling on the Chinese government to immediately “end abuses of human rights of its citizens."
The resolution asks the Chinese government to ensure the Olympic games take place “in an atmosphere that honors the Olympic traditions of freedom and openness.”
Rep. Chris Smith, who had led pro-life efforts in Congress for decades, urged his colleagues to back the measure and sponsored amendments to it.
One change calls on the Chinese government to abandon its coercive population control policy that includes forced abortion.
“China’s coercive population control program has imposed unspeakable violence, pain and humiliation on hundreds of millions of Chinese women, many of whom suffer lifelong depression as a consequence,’ Smith told LifeNews.com on Friday.
"Massively violated by the state, it is no wonder more women commit suicide in China than anywhere else in the world,” he added.
Smith has held more than 25 hearings on human rights abuses in China as chairman House human rights committees is one of the leading experts on human rights abuses around the globe.
“As a direct result of the government’s one child policy, tens of millions of girls are missing today — dead due to sex-selection abortions — creating a huge gender disparity," he said.
"With its heavy reliance on forced abortion, involuntary sterilization and ruinous fines for illegal children, the policy, in effect since 1979, constitutes one of the greatest continuous crimes against humanity in human history,” Smith told LifeNews.com.
Smith said that, with the Olympics coming up, the nation and the world needs to understand that China’s human rights record — especially as it concerns abortion — is deplorable.
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