China Marks 30 Years of One-Child, Forced Abortion Policy; Obama Petitioned
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 24, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — China will mark 30 years of the one-child family planning policy tomorrow. Started in 1980, the policy, which prohibits most Chinese couples form having more than one baby and limits rural residents to two, has resulted in severe human rights abuses ranging from forced sterilizations to 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.
Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, one of the leading pro-life and human rights advocates in Congress, joined today with Harry Wu, former Chinese political prisoner and president of the Laogai Research Foundation and Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, for a press conference on the dark anniversary.
"Tomorrow, September 25, marks 30 years of the Chinese government’s infamous one-child-per-couple policy. On that date 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," Smiths 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," he added.
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.
Smith also appealed to President Obama and called on him to "speak out in defense of the Chinese people tomorrow, especially women and children, on this terrible anniversary." Doing so, he said, would provide encouragement for millions of Chinese people, "to suddenly feel that the leader of the free world understands and empathizes with their plight."
Congressman Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, joined Smith at the press conference and also appealed to Obama.
"As tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of China’s brutal, oppressive, inhumane ‘one-child’ policy, one would hope that President Obama would have taken advantage of his face-to-face meeting yesterday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to express absolute opposition to a policy that results in millions of coerced abortions ever year," he said.
"For someone who says he cares about ‘women’s rights,’ as President Obama so often claims when promoting abortion-on-demand, Mr. Obama seems disturbingly unperturbed by" the one child policy, Franks added.
Franks went further and accused the Obama administration of putting economic issues ahead of human rights concerns.
He said: "Moreover, it would seem that ignoring China’s overwhelming record of human rights violations is an Administration-wide policy. Just last February, while addressing China’s appalling human rights record during a trip to China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shockingly said, ‘… our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.’ I can hardly sum up the Administration’s deplorably skewed priorities better than Mrs. Clinton herself."
A Chinese woman, KE Cheng Ping, also appeared at the conference and tearfully recounted how she was forced by China’s family planning police to have an abortion, deprived of the comfort of her husband and family and without anesthesia.
CHAI Ling, a Tianamen Square massacre survivor who is now President of All Girls Allowed joined the press gathering as well.
Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com
Daily Pro-Life News Report Twice-Weekly Pro-Life
News Report Receive a free daily email report from LifeNews.com with the latest pro-life news stories on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here. Receive a free twice-weekly email report with the latest pro-life news headlines on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here.
