If We Honor International Women’s Day, We Should End Forced Abortion in China

International   |   Reggie Littlejohn   |   Mar 12, 2014   |   11:52AM   |   Beijing, China

Honoring the continuing significance of International Women’s Day, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has called for the end of forced abortion in China.

China’s One Child Policy has caused more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth. Already this year, the headlines coming out of China concerning its One Child Policy are heartbreaking: A Chinese woman, forced to abort at seven months, said, “I feel like a walking corpse.” A Chinese obstetrician was caught and found guilty of selling newborn babies to human traffickers.

onechildpolicyForced abortion is not a choice. Gendercide – the sex-selective abortion of baby girls – is supreme savagery against women and is often coerced. International Women’s Day aims to “focus[] world attention on areas requiring further action.” Because of its enormous population, forced abortion and gendercide in China are the biggest violations of women’s rights in the world today. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers calls for an end to this barbarity.

Reports abound that China has “eased” the policy, giving the false impression that China has abandoned coercive family planning. It has not.

Rather, China has merely lifted the ban on a second child, if either parent is an only child. This is not a wholesale “easing” of the One Child Policy. It is a minor adjustment.

As recently as March 6, 2014, Li Bin, minister in charge of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, stated, “The basic family planning principle has not changed as the country is still the world’s most populous.” She also stated that there is “no timetable for allowing every couple to have a second child.”

The tweaking of the policy implemented this year: 1) will not affect a large percentage of couples in China; 2) is not subject to a timetable in which to implement it; 3) retains the dreaded “birth intervals” between children (if a woman gets pregnant before the interval has lapsed, she may be subject to forced abortion); 4) makes no promise to end the coercive enforcement of the Policy; and 5) promises to continue the One Child Policy as “the basic family planning principle.”

To say that China has “relaxed” or “eased” its One Child Policy under these circumstances is entirely unwarranted.

The problem with the One Child Policy is not the number of children “allowed.” Rather, it is the fact that the CCP is telling women how many children they can have and then enforcing that limit through forced abortion and forced sterilization.

Regardless of the number of children allowed, women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables and forced to abort babies that they want, even up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Pro-choice and pro-life advocates can agree: no one supports forced abortion, because it is not a choice.

The Chinese Communist Party periodically modifies the One Child Policy, but the coercion at its core remains.Headlines stating that China has “eased” the One Child Policy are detrimental to sincere efforts to stop forced abortion in China, because they imply that the One Child Policy is no longer a problem. In a world laden with compassion fatigue, people are relieved to cross China’s One Child Policy off of their list of things to worry about.

But we cannot do that. Let us not abandon the women of China, who continue to face forced abortion, up to the ninth month of pregnancy. The One Child Policy does not need to be adjusted. It needs to be abolished.

LifeNews.com Note: Reggie Littlejohn is the Founder and President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.