Monday, July 23, 2012

Forced Abortions In China Bring Focus To One Child Policy

BEIJING -- Pan Chunyan was grabbed from her grocery store when she was almost eight months pregnant with her third child. Men working for a local official locked her up with two other women, and four days later brought her to a hospital and forced her to put her thumbprint on a document saying she had agreed to an abortion. A nurse injected her with a drug.
"After I got the shot, all the thugs disappeared," Ms. Pan, 31, said in a telephone interview from her home in the southeastern province of Fujian. "My family was with me again. I cried and hoped the baby would survive."
But after hours of labor, the baby was born dead on April 8, "black and blue all over," Ms. Pan said.
Recent reports of women being coerced into late-term abortions by local officials have thrust China's population control policy into the spotlight and ignited an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are seeking to push central officials to fundamentally change or repeal a law that penalizes families for having more than one child. Pressure to alter the policy is building on other fronts as well, as economists say that China's aging population and dwindling pool of young, cheap labor will be a significant factor in slowing the nation's economic growth rate.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/reports-of-forced-abortions-fuel-push-to-end-chinese-law-645875/#ixzz21VpfajE1

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