There are serious questions about the limited impact of the so-called revised one-child policy announced by China this week.
Let’s be clear, nothing in today’s announcement changes the brutal, abusive elements of China’s population control program in which women’s cycles are monitored by the government. Women must still get a birth permit before they can have a child, and fines and penalties will continue for anyone who has a child without government permission.
The announced minimal change in China’s one-child policy is grossly inadequate in light of the coercion they have employed for three decades against women and children. Left unchanged is the Chinese government’s strangle-hold on deciding who can have children, when they can have children and how many children a family can have.
The policy does nothing to address the regular use of forced abortion, when women are dragged into clinics where their children are then killed.
Until the Chinese government abolishes all coercion in their population control program, until they eliminate once and for all the use of forced abortion, its program will still be the most draconian in the world.
There are reports indicating that it was not new-found respect for fundamental human rights that brought the minimal change, but rather the government’s desire to bolster its own economy and power.
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Perhaps motivated by the tens of millions fewer girls than boys as well as the ticking social time bomb of an aging population with fewer new workers and family members to care for the elderly, the token policy change now only allows a second child to live if that child has an urban-dwelling parent who is from a one child family.
This is currently allowed for rural families and does little to address the brutality of the program and the grave injustices Chinese women and families face if they seek to have children without government permission.
LifeNews.com Note: Congressman Chris Smith is a Republican from New Jersey and the head of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. These remarks were delivered during the debate over the bill this summer.
