Appeals Court: Chinese Woman Can Challenge Forced Abortion Asylum Ruling
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 16, 2008
Atlanta, GA (LifeNews.com) — A federal appeals court panel ruled last week that a woman who is escaping the forced abortion policy in China can appeal a decision denying her political asylum in the U.S. The woman could have been forcibly sterilized had she not escaped persecution from family planning officials in her home land.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Shao Yu Yuan can challenge her denial of asylum under the Convention Against Torture.
China has a coercive family planning policy prohibiting most couples from having more than one child and officials there subject violators to forced abortions and sterilizations. They also target the families of violators with political persecution, prison, loss of job, or denial of basic rights.
According to an affidavit submitted in her case, Shao Yu Yuan said family members had told her that many pregnant women in her hometown in China’s Fujian Province were taken by authorities and forced to undergo forced abortion and/or sterilization.
The panel ordered the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals to give Shao a hearing on her request and her attorney, Ted Cox, told AP the ruling would likely allow the mother of two daughters to stay in the U.S.
The panel cited a previous decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in 2005 in favor of the asylum request of a Chinese woman who says she was apprehended by population control officials in her native land and forcibly given a birth control device.
Feng Chai Yang had two children and she says she kicked and screamed as Chinese population control officials implanted an intrauterine device in her body on two occasions. Doctors also gave an injection of an unknown substance that Yang says could have been a sterilization drug.
Yang told the court she was jailed for having more than one child and fined. She feared returning to China because she could be subjected to more fines and more prison time.
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