Last night All Girls Allowed was able to reach Qiao Ping’an, the husband of a woman who suffered a forced abortion.
Mr. Qiao confirmed the following story: On October 2nd, his wife, Ms. Song, a pregnant mother of two, was alone at her home in Heilizhai, Shandong. She had heard nothing from the local family planning office and assumed she would safely deliver her third child since she was six months pregnant. But at 5pm, seven family planning officials arrived and pulled her into a van against her will. They drove her 100 km away to the Dongying Universal Love Women’s Hospital. There, officials confiscated her cell phone and stripped her clothing when she tried to resist. They injected her with a sedative, pressed her finger to a “consent form,” then injected a chemical solution into her womb to induce an abortion. Afterwards, officials locked Ms. Song inside the hospital and neglected to return her clothes to her. She had to remain at the hospital alone until she delivered her stillborn baby on October 5.
Mr. Qiao was furious. He knew that local officials had defied the Chinese government’s recent ban on late-term forced abortion: “My wife was definitely six months pregnant,” he told All Girls Allowed. Initial reports indicated that the family planning officials in Heilizhai were trying to cover up the story. “The officials threatened us and said they would pay us 30,000 RMB ($4,800), but they haven’t given us anything, “said Mr. Qiao. “Instead they asked me what kind of trouble I was trying to cause. I feel this is not right.”
All Girls Allowed founder Chai Ling vowed to fight for Ms. Song: “It is time for the One-Child Policy to end. After Feng Jianmei’s forced abortion in June, the world woke up to the reality of this evil policy. We cannot remain silent now that it has happened again. I believe the love and justice of Jesus will pour over China—he will use a global outcry to restore justice to mothers wronged by the One-Child Policy.”
Today All Girls Allowed learned that Cao Ruyi, who was spared from a forced abortion amid a media firestorm in June, delivered her baby son safely. “This boy’s life shows how important it is for people to stand up against the One-Child Policy and forced abortion.”
Leaked Report Calls for a Change to the One-Child Policy
The story of Ms. Song’s forced abortion comes just days after a report criticizing the One-Child Policy was leaked from the China Development Research Foundation, a think tank with close ties to the Chinese government. According to co-author Cui Feng, the study was only supposed to be published after November 8th, the date of China’s National Congress and once-a-decade leadership transition. The Chinese government has been silencing protests and censoring material in advance of the date.
The CDRF report highlighted the grim demographic outlook created by the One-Child Policy. It also noted that the policy leads to “social conflict”—something that will continue as long as massive fines for every additional child are in place.
New Report: Family Planning Fines in China Cripple Families
All Girls Allowed is releasing a data report on the fines established by each Chinese province’s family planning office. We see that the fines are prohibitively expensive—for a rural family in Hunan province, for instance, where the average annual rural salary is 6,567 RMB ($1,050 USD), a maximum fine would equal 45 years of income. Even the minimum fine would equal 4 years’ salary for a rural worker—still an impossible amount for many families who live from hand to mouth.
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The weight of these fines leave parents with little choice. They either submit to an abortion that they might not have otherwise chosen, or they do what a family in Guizhou did last week—sell the “extra” child to traffickers to avoid paying a fine. A 31-year-old father, knowing he faced a fine if he kept his second son, sold the newborn to a trafficking ring for 40,000 RMB ($6,400 USD). Provinces are also cracking down on one of the last remaining options by demanding that mothers who travel outside China to give birth pay a stiff fine upon their return.
LifeNews Note: Kat Lewis is the director of communications for All Girls Allowed, a human rights group.
