Every January, tens of thousands of Americans come to Washington for the March for Life to commemorate the roughly 55 million unborn children who have been aborted since Supreme Court’s infamous Roe V. Wade decision.
This coming year, the 40th anniversary of Roe, the March for Life will be led by FRC’s own Jeanne Monahan, who directs our Center for Human Dignity. Jeanne was named last month as interim president of the March in the wake of the passing of the March’s founder, Nellie Gray. We are proud of Jeanne’s deep commitment to the sanctity of life, which led the Board of the March to appoint her to this key role.
But there is another anniversary we must not forget: Today is the 32nd anniversary of the beginning of Communist China’s notorious “one-child” policy. In a moving open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, FRC’s friend Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, writes, “The coercive enforcement of China’s cruel and barbaric One Child Policy causes more violence towards women and girls than any other official policy on earth. It is China’s war against women and girls.” You can read the complete text of Reggie’s letter here.
The good news is that there is some movement within the Chinese government for change. According to one of the government’s official newspapers, The People’s Daily: “The National Population and Family Planning Commission is sending 10 teams to 19 provinces, cities and counties to curb misconduct in family planning law enforcement. Wang Xia, head of the national commission, said: ‘No law enforcement raids will be allowed and there should be a system in place to prevent violent enforcement’.”
Nice words; now the proof will be not only in ending the violent practice of forced abortions but also ending the incentives which encourage only one child per couple, including those provided to communities that comply. Such incentives create profound social pressure on couples to abort any child beyond their first.
Tragically, but predictably, China’s war against the unborn is driving that nation toward economic collapse. Even the New York Times, hardly a conservative newspaper, reports: “Besides the concerns of lawyers and human rights advocates, economists and business executives have expressed anxiety about the impact of a slowing population growth rate on the economy. Liang Jianzhang, a well-known executive with a doctoral degree in economics from Stanford University, and Li Jianxin, a demographer at Peking University, have estimated that by 2040, the number of Chinese older than 60 would be 411 million, up from 171 million today. The working population — people between the ages of 20 and 60 — would drop to 696 million from 817 million today.”
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In total, the Chinese government itself estimates that due to the one-child policy, there are 400 million fewer Chinese today than there otherwise would be. This includes not only the tens of millions who have been aborted – most of them girls – but also the children these ended lives would themselves have born as they grew into adulthood and marriage.
State-demanded and incentivized abortion are no less morally repugnant that coerced abortion. To try to distinguish between them is to seek distinctions without any substantive difference. America’s most pro-abortion Administration ever (documented by FRC) can have no real voice in calling upon China to ends its disastrous and evil state abortion policy when that same Administration works actively to undermine the sanctity of life here at home, even to the point of requiring faith-based institutions to provide health insurance plans that include abortion coverage. It is up to Christians in our country and around the world to continue to call on the Chinese government to end, completely, it’s brutal “family planning” (i.e., pro-abortion) activities.
LifeNews.com: Rob Schwarzwalder is with the Family Research Council.
