Here’s a quote…
Strictly enforced population control
Forced abortions in China are not a thing of the past. Under the one child policy, many women in late term pregnancy are still forced to abort their children. Chinese provincial authorities are responsible for mass forced sterilizations, and abortions are often performed by people with inadequate training in unsterile conditions.
[…]
China Daily, a state-controlled newspaper, recently published annual abortion figures of 13 million and a live birth rate of 20 million, as recorded by China’s National Family Planning Commission.
The recent China Daily article, echoed by a BBC report, attributes the high number of abortions to lack of education on contraception. However, experts say that most of the abortions are due to the one child policy.
“[We are] fairly certain most of [the 13 million] are forced abortions,” says Colin Mason, who conducted field work in Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces in March this year for the nonprofit Virginia-based Population Research Institute. The two provinces are “models” in China, where the one child policy is strictly enforced and all birth quotas are met. Based on his experience in China, he said most people would have more than one child if they could.
[…]
Under China’s one child policy, couples must apply for a birth permit before having a child. Single women are forbidden to bear children, married women with one child are given an Intra-Uterine Device (IUD), and women with two or more children or a single son are sometimes forcibly sterilized.
[…]
Punitive measures taken to enforce the one child policy include exorbitant fines, coerced abortions and sterilizations, arbitrary detention, torture, and sometimes child abduction. A social compensation fee is the most common method; those who have unplanned pregnancies can be fined from one half to ten times their annual salary, according to Littlejohn.
[…]
The one child policy is enforced at a local, province-by-province level. The policy at the national level extends to every level of government. Local officials in Gansu Province were reportedly promised promotions and monetary rewards for performing a target number of sterilizations in their area, according to the 2008 annual report by the U.S. State Department’s Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC).
[…]
If one person in a family is accused of an unplanned pregnancy, the rest of family is also liable—neighbors, parents, grandparents can all be caught and put in jail or pressured economically.
[…]
The number of abandoned children is also mounting. Parents who get divorced sometimes abandon their child because policy prevents parents from having another child in a new marriage. Abandoned children become destitute and illegal, with no access to health care or education. The same happens to children whose parents did not obtain a birth permit.
