Womens Rights Without Frontiers

Two-Child Policy Abuses: WRWF Files Complaint Against China at the United Nations

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has filed an official Complaint against China, on the basis of continuing coercive population control under the new Two-Child Policy. Here is the text of that Complaint:

To the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW):

I am the founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, a non-profit, non-partisan international coalition to combat forced abortion, gendercide and sexual slavery in China. I write to complain about coercive family planning in China.

As you know, WRWF has submitted Complaints for the past five years. While the UNCSW acknowledged receipt of these Complaints, China has never responded to them. We believe that, given the international outrage generated by forced abortion and gendercide in China, it behooves China to respond to our official Complaints.

Coercive Population Control Continues Under China’s New Two-Child Policy: New Number, Same Violence Against Women

As I testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on December 12, 2015, Xinhua News Agency reported on October 29, 2015 that China would move to a two-child policy for all couples, “abandoning its decades-long one-child policy.”

Characterizing this latest modification as “abandoning” the One-Child Policy is misleading. A two-child policy will not end any of the human rights abuses caused by the One Child Policy, including forced abortion, involuntary sterilization or the sex-selective abortion of baby girls. Read the full hearing transcript here, including statements by Co-Chairs Representative Christopher Smith and Senator Marco Rubio:

China’s New “Two-Child Policy” & the Continuation of Massive Crimes Against Women and Children

http://www.cecc.gov/events/hearings/china%E2%80%99s-new-%E2%80%9Ctwo-child-policy%E2%80%9D-the-continuation-of-massive-crimes-against-women-and

Coercion is the core of the policy. Instituting a two-child policy will not end forced abortion or forced sterilization. As blind activist Chen Guangcheng succinctly tweeted:

This is nothing to be happy about. First the #CCP would kill any baby after one. Now they will kill any baby after two. #ChinaOneChildPolicy

The reason given for this adjustment is entirely demographic: “to balance population development and address the challenge of an ageing population.” The adjustment is a tacit admission that continuation of the one-child policy will lead to economic and demographic disaster. The policy was originally instituted for economic reasons. It is ironic that through this very policy, China has written its own economic death sentence.

Noticeably absent from the Chinese Communist party’s announcement is any mention of human rights. The Chinese Communist Party has not suddenly developed a conscience or grown a heart. Even though it will now allow all couples to have a second child, China has not promised to end forced abortion, forced sterilization, or forced contraception.[1]

Indeed, the CCP has gone out of its way to emphasize that family planning restrictions will remain in force. Shortly after the announcement of the two-child policy, Vice-Minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission Wang Peian said that “China would not abandon its family planning restrictions.” He said, “A large population is China’s basic national condition so we must adhere to the basic state policy of family planning.”[2] He also said that “China needs to . . . promote birth monitoring” before the two-child policy comes into effect.[3]

It appears, therefore, that China plans to maintain its iron grip over the wombs of women. The Chinese Communist Party will continue to intrude into the bedrooms and between the sheets of the families in China, requiring an arduous process to obtain a “birth permit,” a system of paid informants, and ultrasound checks to make sure that a woman’s IUD is still in place.[4]

Coercion is the core of the policy. Instituting a two-child policy will not end forced abortion or forced sterilization.

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. There is no guarantee that the CCP will cease their appalling methods of enforcement. Women will still have to obtain a government-issued birth permit, for the first and second child, or they may be subject to forced abortion. It will still be illegal for an unmarried woman to have a child. 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.

Coercion Continues After the Institution of the Two-Child Policy

According to a report published by Shanghai online news portal Sixth Tone on July 22, 2016, a Guangdong couple has been told they must have an abortion or both lose their government jobs.[5] The wife is eight months pregnant.

The couple, surnamed Zhong, both have a child from a previous marriage. They thought that they could have a child together under China’s new Two-Child Policy, as is the case in other provinces in China. They were mistaken, under the current laws of Guangdong.

The due date of Zhong’s child is September 10. She told Sixth Tone that she felt depressed, anxious, trapped. “I can’t give up on this child, as I’m almost 40,” she said. “And it wouldn’t be easy for us to find jobs again, given our ages.” Zhong shares her anxieties on WeChat, where approximately 500 people have gathered to share similar experiences.

The Chinese Communist propaganda machine made a big deal out of its shift to a Two-Child Policy, announcing that they had “abandoned” the One-Child Policy. WRWF immediately stated that this minor modification would not end coercion, and now the proof is beginning to leak out. Our hearts go out to the Zhong family. They are brave indeed to stand up to the intense government pressure to abort at eight months or both lose their jobs. The Chinese government is doing its best to force them to have an abortion by exerting intense financial pressure. The fact that there are 500 people commiserating with them on WeChat demonstrates that they are not alone. This would indicate a pattern or practice of continuing coercion.

Another Guangdong native, He Liping, is six months pregnant. She faces a crippling fine: “I had no idea that we’re not qualified to have a second child until I went to register for a birth permit with the local neighborhood committee.” Her husband had a child before marrying her, and they have a two-year old together. She is now six months pregnant. Fines for illegal children in Foshan run 260,000 yuan ($39,000). “It’s a huge amount of money for an average family like mine,” He told Sixth Tone.

He Liping does not face joblessness, but rather a ‘terror fine.’ These fines can be up to ten times a person’s annual salary. Most people cannot afford to pay these fines and are forced to have abortions. In addition, the Chinese government announced earlier this year that they had abolished the birth permit system for first and second children. Clearly, this is not the case.[6] [Addendum]

The Chinese Communist Party has not agreed to get out of the bedrooms of the Chinese people. The fact that Sixth Tone is a State-controlled media outlet indicates that even within the Chinese Communist Party there are those who recognize the human tragedy and appalling injustice of coercive population control.

Number of Reported Abortions in China Increased from 13 Million to 23 Million – 2015 State Department Report

In the past, the Chinese government reported 13 million abortions a year, noting that according to official Chinese sources, “The number of abortions performed is believed to be higher,” because the statistics were collected only from registered medical institutions and did not include abortions at unregistered clinics.

The 2015 State Department Report, however, states that an “official news media outlet” has reported that “at least an additional 10 million chemically induced abortions were performed in nongovernmental facilities.” The Chinese government did not provide a statistic on how many of these abortions were forced.

Adding abortions of official and unofficial facilities results in 23 million abortions a year. 23 million abortions a year comes to 63,013 abortions a day, 2625 abortions an hour, 43 per minute. The United States population is about 320 million, with about 1 million abortions per year. The population of China is almost 1.4 billion, with about 23 million abortions per year. Therefore China, with four times the population of the United States, has 23 times the number of abortions.

NIPT in the Bud

Technology spreading in China may target girls in gendercide abortions

Even as the Chinese government moves to a Two Child Policy, women’s rights in China may be in more danger than ever before – especially for baby girls.

NIPT, a prenatal diagnostic technology, analyzes fetal DNA taken from a mother’s blood to discover birth defects. However, the tool can also be used to discover a baby’s gender as early as seven weeks’ gestation – making it easier to terminate if a pregnancy is unwanted for being female. Such abuse has been documented in several countries, including the United States and Great Britain, where a government study recently showed evidence potentially linking the test with prenatal gendercide.

Reports now indicate NIPT is rapidly spreading in China, where baby girls already struggle to survive under a strong cultural preference for males.

As I stated in testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, “Where brutal son preference meets non-invasive, early sex determination of a fetus, inevitably baby girls will be selectively aborted.” (Click here to read full text of statement.)

The demand for NIPT has already grown so strong that Chinese officials last year implemented stricter regulations for its use – apparently with an eye to curbing abuses by expectant families.

Moreover, the recent change to a “Two Child Policy” makes the scenario for girls even worse: studies indicate that a pregnancy is far likelier to be aborted for being a girl if it is the second of two, rather than the only one allowed.

Such sex selective abortions, according to a 2009 British Medical Journal study, accounts for almost all the excess males in China: in other words, 37 million Chinese men will never marry because their future wives were terminated before they were born. This provides a strong demand for trafficking in women and sexual slavery in and around China.

It’s the latest link showing the Chinese Communist Party’s switch to a Two Child Policy is a switch in name only – China’s forced population control system remains the same.

Coercive Population Control Is Not the Answer to Global Warming, Sustainable Development

The theme for UNCSW 2016 was “Women’s empowerment and the link to sustainable development.” Regarding “sustainable development,” at the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December of 2009, a senior official responsible for the coercive population control famously stated that the One Child Policy was successful in reducing carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

According to Xinhua, Zhao Baige, then-Vice Minister of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, stated:

“China has managed to bring down its birth rate with the family planning policy in the past 30 years, which results in less population and less carbon dioxide emission . . . Such a decline in population growth converts into a reduction of 1.83 billion tons of carbon dioxide emission in China per annum at present. . . . The policy on family planning proves to be a great success. It not only contributes to reduction of global emission, but also provides experiences for other countries, developing countries in particular, in their pursuit for a coordinated and sustainable development.”

China’s Population Policy Helps Slow Global Warming, Says Official 12/10/09 (Copenhagen) http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/10/content_12624315.htm

China has touted the elimination of 400 million lives under the coercive One Child Policy as an effective means to combat climate change. They have also set their population control program out as a successful example for developing nations to follow.

What the Chinese government has not mentioned is the fact that too many of these lives were prevented through forced abortion and involuntary sterilization.

Human beings are not walking carbon footprints.

Forced abortion is not a choice. It is official government rape.

UNCSW Theme: The Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls

The UNCSW this year reviewed the 2013 theme, “the prevention of violence against women and girls.” Forced abortion and gendercide under China’s One Child Policy will continue under the two-child policy. Since the UNCSW has stated through its 2013 “Agreed Conclusions” that coercive population control should end, WRWF calls upon the U.N. to take effective action to end it.

More often than not, gendercide is not a choice either. There is a strong correlation between sex-selective abortion and coercion. Crushing social, economic, political and personal pressures in cultures with a strong son preference trample women pregnant with girls. All too often, women in these cultures do not “select” their daughters for abortion. They are forced.

For most of us, “it’s a girl” is cause for enormous joy, happiness and celebration. But in many countries, this phrase can be a death sentence. In fact, the words, “it’s a girl” are the deadliest words on earth when said at the birth of a child. According to one U.N. estimate, up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to “gendercide,” the selective abortion, abandonment or deadly neglect of baby girls just because they are female.

This is not a political issue. This is a human rights issue that must be approached as an area of common ground. No one supports the systematic elimination of women and girls.

In China, the birth ratio of girls to boys is the most skewed in the world. The sex ratio at birth has risen from 108.5 in 1982 to almost 118 boys born for every 100 girls born in 2010.

Sons traditionally carry on the family name, work the fields, and take care of their parents in old age. A daughter joins her husband’s family at marriage. There is a saying: “Raising a girl is like watering someone else’s garden.” The One Child Policy exacerbates the underlying son preference. When couples are restricted to one child, women often become the focus of intense pressure by their husband and in-laws to ensure a boy.

Systematic, sex-selective abortion constitutes gendercide. Because of this gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million more males than females in China today. The presence of these “excess males” is the driving force behind human trafficking and sexual slavery, not only within China but from surrounding nations as well.

China has the highest female suicide rate of any country in the world. According to the 2013 U.S. State Department China Human Rights Report, the numbers of female suicides have risen sharply in the past several years, from 500 women per day to 590.

China’s One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth and any other official policy in the history of the world. This is the true “War Against Women.”

The One Child Policy is causing a “senior tsunami.” The population is aging rapidly, with no young population to sustain it. According to figures provided by political economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, China’s working population peaked in 2013 at about 73% and is now beginning a steady decline to 67% in 2030. Meanwhile, the ratio of China’s population, ages 55-64 to its population ages 15 to 24, will increase from about 30% in 1990 to 140% in 2030.

Bottom line: China will grow old before it grows rich. China’s population problem is not that it has too many people, but that it has too few young people.

Breast Cancer Induced by Forced Abortion Is a Violation of Women’s Rights

A medical study from China has revealed an additional way in which women are victimized by the One-Child Policy: significantly increased risk of breast cancer.

A meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females, dated November 24, 2013, was published by NCBI, National Center for Biotechnology Information, branch of the NIH, National Institute of Health.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24272196

“IA [is] significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among Chinese females, and the risk of breast cancer increases as the number of IA increases.” Specifically, the study found that one IA increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer by 44 percent, two by 76 percent, and three by 89 percent.

In our view, the strong association of abortion and breast cancer established by this study brings the women’s rights violations under the One Child Policy to a new level: a woman pregnant in China without a birth permit is subjected to both government imposed forced abortion, and also breast cancer as a result of it. Where abortion is forced, the subsequent development of breast cancer becomes a violation of women’s rights in itself. “China: One-Child Policy Linked to Breast Cancer – Study.” http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/blog/?p=1428. 12/2/13

It is a woman’s right to choose to give birth to her daughters. Together, China and India comprise one third of the world’s population. That one-third of the world’s women are deprived of their right to bear girls is the biggest women’s rights abuse on earth. This is the true War on Women, and it deserves a passionate response from groups that stand for women’s rights.

These problems are not confined to China and India. Female feticide happens in the United States and Canada in numbers significant enough to distort gender ratios. This is discrimination against women in its most violent form.

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers: International Advocacy

Fortunately, there is hope. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has launched two campaigns. First is our international advocacy campaign, in which we document these atrocities and speak to governments about how we in the West are funding it through UNFPA and International Planned Parenthood. We have had some success: The European Parliament passed a Resolution and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2013 passed an “Agreed Conclusion” condemning forced abortion and state-run coercive population control.

Saving Baby Girls At-Risk in China – Our “Save a Girl” Campaign

Second, through our “Save a Girl” Campaign in rural China, we are stopping gendercide, one baby girl at a time. We have field workers in China who reach out to women who have had an ultrasound, learned that they are pregnant with a girl, and are planning to abort or abandon her. A field worker will visit that woman and say, “Don’t abort your baby just because she’s a girl. She’s a precious daughter. We will give you a monthly stipend for a year, to help you support her.”

The practical support we offer empowers these women to keep their daughters. By the time the girl is three months old, she’s laughing and smiling and the whole family is in love with her. They can’t imagine life without her and thank us for saving the life of their daughter. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning – knowing that there are babies in China who are alive today because of our efforts. It is astonishing how little money it takes to save someone’s life in China.

We are also living the mission every day, around our own kitchen table. With the help of Cong. Chris Smith and other brave souls in the United States and China, we were able to obtain safe passage from China to the United States for Anni and Ruli Zhang, the daughters of veteran pro-democracy activist Zhang Lin, who is currently serving a 3.5 year jail sentence for standing up for 10-year-old Anni’s right to go to school. My husband Robert and I have taken Anni and Ruli into our family and are raising them as our own daughters. Anni has won a piano competition and will play at Carnegie Hall in December! Anni’s mother was almost forcibly aborted at six months. Anni is a shining example of the beauty, brilliance and love that are being lost every day in China, due to forced and sex-selective abortion.

Every struggling mother in China deserves help to keep her daughter. Every little girl deserves to see the light of day.

Learn more about the “Save a Girl” campaign:
http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion

The Chinese Communist Party Will Never Relinquish Coercive Population Control

As fully explained in my Congressional testimony of April 30, 2015, the Chinese Communist Party will never relinquish coercive population control because 1) it enables them to maintain its grip on power through terror – it is social control, masquerading as population control; 2) it is a lucrative profit center, bringing in as much as $314 billion in fines since its inception; 3) it provides an infrastructure of coercion that can be used to crush dissent of any sort; and 4) it ruptures relationships of trust, so that people cannot organize for change. I believe that the Chinese Communist Party is maintaining its grip on power by shedding the blood of the innocent women and babies of China.

Conclusion

Sending out the message that China has “abandoned” its one-child policy is detrimental to sincere efforts to stop forced abortion and gendercide in China, because this message implies 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 must not do that. Let us not abandon the women of China, who continue to face forced abortion, and the baby girls of China, who continue to face sex-selective abortion and abandonment under the new Two-Child Policy.

The one-child policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be abolished.

Policy Recommendations:

We respectfully request that the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women urge the Chinese government to:

*Abolish the Two-Child Policy and all forms of coercive population control;

*Offer incentives for couples to have girls;[7]

*Offer pensions to couples who do not have a son, ensuring that parents of girls will not become impoverished in their old age;

*Abolish the hukou system, so that all children will have access to healthcare and education;

*Establish principles of Corporate Social Responsibility, to ensure that foreign corporations doing business in China do not allow coercive population control measures to be taken against their employees; and

*Defund UNFPA, unless and until UNFPA stops supporting or participating in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China, in violation of the 1985 Kemp-Kasten Amendment.

I hope to work with you to help end this extremely serious violation of the rights of women and girls in China. Please feel free to contact me should you require any further information.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.

Very truly yours,

Reggie Littlejohn

Reggie Littlejohn, President

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers

www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org

Stop Forced Abortion – China’s War on Women! Video (4 mins)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjtuBcJUsjY

[1] “Why Critics Are Not Satisfied with the End of China’s One-Child Policy.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/29/why-critics-are-not-satisfied-with-the-end-of-chinas-one-child-policy/ 10/29/15; “Still No Dignity for Chinese Women.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/opinion/china-one-child-policy-still-no-dignity-for-chinese-women.html 11/11/15; “Change from One- to Two-Child Policy Won’t End Forced Abortions in China.” http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/human-rights-advocate-change-one-two-child-policy-wont-end-forced-abortions 10/29/15; “Horrors of One-Child Policy Leave Deep Scars in Chinese Society.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/horrors-of-one-child-policy-leave-deep-scars-in-chinese-society/2015/10/30/6bd28e0c-7e7b-11e5-bfb6-65300a5ff562_story.html 10/30/15

[2] “2-Child Policy ‘to fuel growth by 0.5%.’” http://www.chinadailyasia.com/nation/2015-11/10/content_15342620.html 11/1/15; “China Amps Up PR Campaign Extolling ‘Two-Child Policy.’” http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/10/china-amps-pr-campaign-extolling-two-child-policy/ 11/10/15

[3] “China Stresses Two-Child Policy Not Yet Valid.” http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-11/10/c_134802823.htm 11/10/15; No Help for Chinese Mom Expecting Second Child: New Two-Child Policy Won’t Be Enacted in Time to Save Pro-Life Leader Facing Pressure to Abort.” http://www.worldmag.com/2015/10/no_relief_for_chinese_mom_expecting_second_child 10/30/15

[4] “China’s Population-Control Machine Churns On.” https://www.freedomhouse.org/blog/china-population-control-machine-churns 1/13/14

[5] Guangdong Families Told to Have Abortion or Lose Job

http://www.sixthtone.com/news/guangdong-families-told-have-abortion-or-lose-job

[6] ADDENDUM. On August 3, 2016 – just after this Complaint was filed — an article appeared on womenofchina.cn, the English language website of the Communist Party-affiliated China Women’s Federation. The article, entitled, “Couples Not Waiting for Two-Child Policy,” stated: “Remarried couples in Guangdong province who are pregnant with their second child will not be forced to have an abortion, even though they have not yet been granted permission for a second child. The provincial population and family planning commission will also not suggest that employers dismiss or punish those who are pregnant with a second child without permission, the [provincial] commission said on Tuesday.” See, http://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/features/Spotlight/1608/372-1.htm

It is unclear whether the statement of the provincial commission would affect the families whose plight is discussed in Sixth Tone. For both families, three children were involved. Would the current pregnancies of Zhong and He be considered second or third children? Will they be allowed to maintain their pregnancies without losing their jobs or paying a “terror fine”? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, the Women’s Federation article goes on to quote a remarried woman from Guangdong as saying, “Some wives who have been pregnant with their second child have had an abortion because they fear being dismissed by their employers.” The decisions of these married women to abort their second children rather than lose their jobs underscores the ongoing human agony and tragedy caused by coercive population control in China. The Women’s Federation article concludes by noting that “the birthrate in [Guangdong] – which lacks a sufficient workforce and relies on people migrating from other provinces – has remained low for decades . . .” This is the real reason for the adjustment from a One-Child Policy to a Two-Child Policy. The Chinese government has not repented of its women’s rights atrocities. Rather, it fears the inevitable economic consequences of its 35-year history of coercive population control.

[7] We have found in our “Save a Girl” campaign that the encouragement of modest monetary support is enough to make the difference between life and death to a baby girl. “Twin Girls Saved from Abortion in China, Husband’s Family Only Wanted Boys.” http://www.lifenews.com/2014/05/30/twin-girls-saved-from-abortion-in-china-husband-family-told-wife-they-only-wanted-boys/

Related Links, 2015- 2016

Couples Not Waiting for Two-child Policy 8/3/1 http://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/features/Spotlight/1608/372-1.htm

China: Woman 8 Months Pregnant Forced to Abort or Lose Job http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2016/08/china-woman-8-months-pregnant-forced-to-abort-or-lose-job/#.V6ANyK4eNRk

China’s Population Control Machine Reaches Disastrous Proportions http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/chinas-population-control-machine-reaches-disastrous-proportions/

Why Many Women in China Won’t Celebrate Mother’s Day http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/why-many-women-in-china-wont-celebrate-mothers-day-96721/

Women’s United Nations Reporting Network: Sterilizations, Fines Enforce China’s Population Control Policy http://www.wunrn.com/2016/05/china-forced-abortion-sterilization-fines-enforce-chinas-population-control-policy-data-through-2015/

Reinventing China’s Abortion Police http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36203572

China Smuggles Vietnamese Child Brides to Bridge Gender Imbalance http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/04/29/china-smuggles-vietnamese-child-brides-bridge-gender-imbalance/

Exposing Inhumane, Coercive Population Control 4/28/16
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/28/wilberforce-weekend-exposing-inhumane-coercive-pop/?page=all

State Dept. Human Rights Report Estimated 23 Million Abortions in China – More than 63,000 a Day http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/state-dept-human-rights-report-estimated-23-million-abortions-china-last

Federal Report: China Suppression of Rights Getting Worse, Not Better http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/04/18/report-china-suppression-getting-worse/

China Aborts 23 Million Per Year as Part of Government Policies that Persist https://stream.org/china-aborts-23-million-per-year-part-of-policies-that-persist/

China Kills 23 Million Unborn Babies Each Year; Forced Abortion, Sterilization Continue http://www.christiantoday.com/article/china.kills.23.million.unborn.babies.each.year.forced.abortion.sterilisation.continue.unabated.u.s.state.department/84175.htm

Human Rights Group Decries Gendercide – 200 Million Girls Killed Sex-Selective Abortions 4/14/16 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/04/14/human-rights-group-decries-gendercide-200-million-girls-killed-sex-selective-abortions/

China Brags on Ending Lives to Stop Pollution http://www.onenewsnow.com/pro-life/2016/03/24/china-brags-on-ending-lives-to-stop-pollution

Women’s Rights Activist: China Policy Official Government Rape http://www.wnd.com/2016/03/womens-rights-activist-china-policy-official-government-rape/

Reggie Littlejohn to United Nations: Forced Abortion is not the answer to Climate Change http://catholicbusinessjournal.biz/content/reggie-littlejohn-united-nations-forced-abortion-not-answer-climate-change

中国打击反拐NGO比反拐更严厉 http://www.voachinese.com/content/china-women-rights-forum-new-york-20160316/3241419.html

Epoch Times – Congressional Hearing http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/15/12/5/n4588784.htm

女权组织联合国总部呼吁中国停止强制堕胎 http://www.voachinese.com/content/reggie-littlejohn-20150320/2689070.html

中国大兴无创性产前测试技术女婴堕胎趋势上升 http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/nu-12242015095303.html

China’s War on Women Continues Unabated (NIPT) http://www.onenewsnow.com/pro-life/2016/03/09/chinas-war-on-women-continues-unabated

Report: China had worst year ever for Human Rights Abuses in 2015 http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/08/report-china-had-worst-year-ever-for-human-rights-abuses-in-2015/

Activists Call for Release of Jailed Women http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/activists-call-for-release-of-jailed-women-03082016114921.html

Catholic News Agency: Why China’s Two-Child Policy Won’t Alter Its Human Rights Horrors http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/why-chinas-two-child-policy-wont-alter-its-human-rights-horrors-57868/

China Eliminates Birth Permits, But Violators Still to Be Punished http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/01/08/china-eliminates-birth-permits-but-violators-still-to-be-punished/

Boost in Pre-Natal DNA Testing Could Target Girls for Sex-Selective Abortion http://www.lifenews.com/2015/12/24/boost-in-prenatal-dna-testing-could-target-girls-for-sex-selective-abortion/

The End of China’s One Child Policy 12/13/15 http://yaleglobalhealthreview.com/2015/12/13/the-end-of-chinas-one-child-policy/

中国大兴无创性产前测试技术 NIPT testing causes rise in abortion of females 女婴堕胎趋势上升 http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/nu-12242015095303.html

CBN: State-Controlled Parenting Still the Rule of Law in China http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/December/State-Controlled-Parenting-Still-the-Rule-of-Law-in-China/

China’s Abortion Policy: New Name, Same Death http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/chinas-abortion-policy-new-name-same-death/

Epoch Times: China’s Two-Child Policy: Coercive Population Control Continues. http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1913381-chinas-two-child-policy-coercive-population-control-continues/

美国会听证〝二胎化〞议员：中共控制生育甚于纳粹| 新唐人 … http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/gb/2015/12/05/a1239789_p.html

Video: Expert Says China Will Continue forced abortions, sterilizations 11/25/15 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/expert-chinas-new-two-child-policy-will-not-halt-abortions-sterilizations

Chinese Government Raked in Billions in Fines from One-Child, Forced-Abortion Policy. By Reggie Littlejohn. 11/23/15 http://www.lifenews.com/2015/11/23/chinese-government-raked-in-billions-in-fines-from-one-child-forced-abortion-policy/

Washington Post: Why critics are not satisfied with the end of China’s One Child Policy https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/29/why-critics-are-not-satisfied-with-the-end-of-chinas-one-child-policy/

Ted Cruz Blasts China’s Population Control: “If We Stand for Women, Stand Against Forced Abortions.” 11/5/15 http://www.lifenews.com/2015/11/05/ted-cruz-blasts-chinas-population-control-if-we-stand-for-women-stand-against-forced-abortions/

China Amps PR Campaign Extolling Two-Child Policy http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/10/china-amps-pr-campaign-extolling-two-child-policy/

Ted Cruz Slams China’s Population Control Policy http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/05/ted-cruz-slams-chinas-population-control-policy/

The Dissident – Victims of Communism Blog – China’s New Two-Child Policy Will Not End Forced Abortion or Gendercide http://blog.victimsofcommunism.org/chinas-new-two-child-policy-will-not-end-forced-abortion-or-gendercide/

Chicago Tribune: Horrors of China’s One Child Policy leaves deep scars in Chinese society http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-china-one-child-policy-20151031-story.html

Center for Global Strategic Monitoring. (Gordon Chang) China’s Self-Inflicted Demographic Disaster is Here http://www.cgsmonitor.com/2015/10/31/chinas-self-inflicted-demographic-disaster-is-here/

China to Allow Two Children, But Human Rights Concerns Continue http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/china-to-allow-two-children-but-human-rights-concerns-continue

End of China’s ‘One Child’ Policy Draws International Reactions http://www.voanews.com/content/end-of-china-one-child-policy-engenders-dsicussion/3030076.

China’s New Two-Child Policy Will Not End Forced Abortion or Gendercide http://www.lifenews.com/2015/10/30/chinas-new-two-child-policy-will-not-end-forced-abortion-or-gendercide/

Critics Say China’s Two-Child Ploy Changes Nothing http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/30/critics-say-chinas-two-child-ploy-changes-nothing/

Horrors of One Child Policy Leave Deep Scars in Chinese Society https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/horrors-of-one-child-policy-leave-deep-scars-in-chinese-society/2015/10/30/6bd28e0c-7e7b-11e5-bfb6-65300a5ff562_story.html

Human rights activists and the US government position: two-child policy is still not enough 人权人士及美国政府表态：二胎政策仍不够 (with Chen Guangcheng and Chris Smith) http://www.voachinese.com/content/human-rights-us-two-child-policy-china-20151029/3028709.html

Why critics are not satisfied with the end of China’s One Child Policy https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/29/why-critics-are-not-satisfied-with-the-end-of-chinas-one-child-policy/

Human Rights Advocate: Change from One- to Two-Child Policy Won’t End Forced Abortions http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/human-rights-advocate-change-one-two-child-policy-wont-end-forced-abortions

China Admits One-Child Policy a Failure 10/29/15 http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/china-admits-1-child-policy-a-failure/

China Relaxes One Child Policy, But Control Persists (interviewed with Robert George and Chen Guangcheng) http://aleteia.org/2015/10/30/china-relaxes-one-child-policy-but-control-persists/

China Replaces One-Child Policy with Two-Child Policy 10/27/15 http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/World.php?id=12846

China replaces one-child Policy with two-child policy 10/29/15 http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/china-replaces-one-child-policy-with-two-child-policy-74705/

China Replaces One-Child Policy with Two-Child Policy 10/27/15 http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/World.php?id=12846

China Admits One-Child Policy Failure http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/china-admits-1-child-policy-a-failure/

Yale Law Grad Who Abandoned Her Career to Help Save 200 Chinese Babies (The Heritage Foundation / Daily Signal) 10/20/15 http://dailysignal.com/2015/10/20/meet-the-yale-law-grad-who-abandoned-her-career-to-help-save-200-chinese-babies/

U.S. Chinese Human Rights Activists Urge China to End Coercive Birth Control 10/16/15 中美人权人士敦促中国停止强制计生 http://www.voachinese.com/content/us-china-human-rights-aboration-20151014/3007080.html

Xi Jinping’s “Commitment” to Women’s Rights Rings Hollow, Activists Say 9/28/15 http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1777907-xi-jinpings-commitment-to-womens-rights-rings-hollow-activists-say/

Posted in Breast Cancer, China's One Child Policy, Chinese Communist Party, coerced abortion, communism, Forced Abortion, gendercide, NIPT, One Child Policy, pro-choice, pro-life, Reggie Littlejohn, reproductive health, reproductive rights, Save a Girl, sex selective abortion, two child policy, Uncategorized, UNCSW, Women's Rights Without Frontiers | Comments Off

Woman 8 months pregnant forced to abort or lose job

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

According to a report published by Shanghai online news portal Sixth Tone, a Guangdong couple has been told they must have an abortion or both lose their government jobs. The wife is eight months pregnant.

Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, stated, “The Chinese Communist propaganda machine made a big deal out of its shift to a Two-Child Policy, announcing that they had “abandoned” the One-Child Policy. I immediately stated that this minor modification would not end coercion, and now the proof is beginning to leak out. Our hearts go out to the Zhong family. They are brave indeed to stand up to the intense government pressure to abort at eight months or both lose their jobs. The Chinese government is doing its best to force them to have an abortion by exerting intense financial pressure. The fact that there are 500 people commiserating with them on WeChat demonstrates that they are not alone. This would indicate a pattern or practice of continuing coercion.”

Littlejohn continued: “He Liping does not face joblessness, but rather what I call a ‘terror fine.’ These fines can be up to ten times a person’s annual salary. Most people cannot afford to pay these fines and are forced to have abortions. In addition, the Chinese government announced earlier this year that they had abolished the birth permit system for first and second children. Clearly, this is not the case.

“The Chinese Communist Party has not agreed to get out of the bedrooms of the Chinese people. The fact that Sixth Tone is a State-controlled media outlet indicates that even within the Chinese Communist Party there are those who recognize the human tragedy and appalling injustice of coercive population control. We need to keep the international pressure on the Chinese Communist Party until all coercive population control is eradicated. Take action by signing our petition against forced abortion in China.”

Watch — Stop Forced Abortion – China’s War on Women! Video (4 mins)

http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/?nav=stop-forced-abortion

Read the original Sixth Tone article:

Guangdong Families Told to Have Abortion or Lose Job

http://www.sixthtone.com/news/guangdong-families-told-have-abortion-or-lose-job

Posted in China's One Child Policy, Chinese Communist Party, coerced abortion, Forced Abortion, hukou, One Child Policy, pro-choice, pro-life, reproductive rights, two child policy, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Without Frontiers | Comments Off

Why many women in China didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

Re-published with the permission of the Catholic News Agency (link below)

May 8, 2016. Mothers across the globe are celebrating Mother’s Day today with their husbands and children. But for many women in China, Mother’s Day is a haunting reminder of the cost of their country’s harsh reproductive laws.

While abortion rates in China have in the past been numbered at 13 million per year, according to the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015, the real number is almost double.

According to the report, released April 12, the number of annual abortions in China is actually 10 million higher than previously thought, bringing the total number of annual abortions to a staggering 23 million a year, with no specification on how many of them are forced.

The reason for the increase, according to the report, is that the 13 million covers only the number of abortions in official, government facilities, whereas the additional 10 million were reported by an official Chinese news outlet for non-governmental facilities.

The report states that “the National Health Population and Family Planning Commission reported that 13 million women annually terminated unplanned pregnancies.”

“An official news media outlet also reported at least an additional 10 million chemically induced abortions were performed in nongovernment facilities,” the report read, stating that “Government statistics on the percentage of all abortions that were non-elective was not available.”

Reggie Littlejohn and her daughter, Anni, the daughter of Zhang Lin, in Yosemite, 2015.

Reggie Littlejohn and Anni in Yosemite, 2015.

Zhang Anni is a classic example of the nightmare that China’s restrictive birth policy forces on countless women, as well as the hope and promise that is lost daily to forced abortions and gendercide in the country.

The second daughter of Chinese dissident and human rights activist Zhang Lin, Anni, 13, was nearly forcibly aborted numerous times when her mother was just six months pregnant.

Her family had been persecuted relentlessly for her father’s writings and activism against the Chinese Communist Party, to the extent that he was jailed numerous times and tortured with cruel punishments, such as jumping on his back, hands and feet, resulting in injuries that put him in a wheelchair.

Since Anni was Zhang Lin’s second child at a time when it was still illegal to have two children under the Communist Party’s strict One-Child Policy, her mother was targeted for forced abortion, with family planning police showing up and pounding on their door daily to drag her out for an abortion.

Anni’s mother was so distressed that she contemplated suicide, but fought against the idea in order to protect her daughter’s life.

In the end, Zhan Lin was able to save Anni from being aborted by convincing the family planning police that she was the first child of his second wife. However, his constant blogging about the brutal pressure being placed on his family also put the government in a bad light, so they decided to back off.

But that wasn’t the end. At 10 years old Anni became the youngest person in China to be detained in prison. She was arrested after school due to her father’s activism and kept overnight without food or a blanket, and was released the next day only after hours of haggling on the part of her father to get her out.

Given the precariousness of the situation and knowing he would likely go back to prison, Zhang Lin wanted to get Anni out of China, and contacted women’s rights activist Reggie Littlejohn for help.

President and founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, an organization dedicated to fighting forced abortion and gendercide in China, Littlejohn and her husband agreed to take in both Anni and her older sister Ruli. Four people were jailed for helping them to get out of the country.

Now, after just two and a half years in the United States, Anni has gone from speaking no English to getting straight-A’s and is one of the top students in her class. She began piano lessons shortly after arriving to the U.S., and recently won a competition to play in New York’s prestigious Carnegie Hall.

Littlejohn, who has taken on full parental responsibilities for Ruli and Anni, told CNA May 4 that to her, Anni is “an example.”

“As a second daughter, girls like that are commonly aborted due to gendercide. And also her mother was almost forcibly aborted…her mother was so distressed about this that she actually contemplated suicide, it just tore her apart,” Littlejohn said.

However, she said that when she looks at Anni, who she considers as her own daughter, “I think of how beautiful and how brilliant she is and this is the kind of talent and beauty and light and love and joy that are being lost through forced abortion and sex-selective abortion in China every day.”

While many might believe that these practices have stopped with China’s recent implementation of a two-child policy, which went into effect Jan. 1, Littlejohn says this is far from being true.

“The new Two-Child Policy is nothing to celebrate about. They used to kill every child after one, now they kill every child after two. So the entire infrastructure of coercion is still in place,” she said.

“You still have to have government permission to have two children. It’s two children per couple, so if you’re not in a couple, you can’t have a kid. So single women are still forcibly aborted in China and that accounts for a very large proportion of the abortions,” she added.

The State Department’s report also indicated a system of coercion surrounding reproductive rights in China, reporting that “the country’s birth-limitation policies retained harshly coercive elements in law and practice.”

The report spoke of the “intense pressure” put on families by the police to enforce birth quotas, resulting in “instances of local family-planning officials using physical coercion to meet government goals.”

“Such practices included the mandatory use of birth control and the forced abortion of unauthorized pregnancies,” it read, noting that in cases in which the family already had two children, “one parent was often required to undergo sterilization.”

There are even links between job promotion and success in meeting the birth limitations. Police job promotion, in particular, “provided a powerful structural incentive for officials to employ coercive measures to meet population goals.”

While officially prohibited in China, sex-selective abortions “continued because of traditional preference for male children and the birth-limitation policy,” the report stated.

“Female infanticide, gender-biased abortions, and the abandonment and neglect of baby girls remained problems due to the traditional preference for sons and the birth-limitation policy.”

Littlejohn said she doesn’t expect the number of gendercide abortions to go down even under the two-child policy, because when a family has a daughter for their first child, “it’s routine to abort or abandon” a second daughter so that the family can reserve the place for a boy.

She said she has been discouraged that the amount of international pressure to stop these atrocities from happening in China have dropped after the country’s leaders changed the rules on the one-child policy.

“The Chinese Communist Party propaganda machine announced this change as the abandonment of the One-Child Policy and the western media just picked up on it. So people think that the problem of forced abortion and sex-selective abortion is over,” she said.

However, if the State Department’s 2015 report is any indication, this is a trend that won’t end any time soon.

Littlejohn said that as time goes on, she expects more cases of forced abortions to leak out of China, making it obvious that the problem still exists. However, getting new cases isn’t easy due to the trauma and persecution women face if they decide to speak out.

“If a woman is forcibly aborted…she’s been completely traumatized, she’s lost her child and she has suffered extreme sexual violence, basically. I equate forced abortion with official government rape,” Littlejohn said.

Then if the woman lets news of her forced abortion leak to western media, “she and her family are going to be intensely and heavily persecuted, to add onto all the trauma.”

“For every woman who will step forward and say ‘this happened to me,’ there are a thousand or a million that are going to be silent because they do not want to endure the persecution of themselves and their families on top of the forced abortion and the loss of a child that they’ve already suffered,” she said.

In order to help draw attention to the situation Littlejohn urged people to watch a brief, 4 minute video her organization produced called “Stop Forced Abortion: China’s War Against Women” in order be informed, and encouraged donations to their “Save a Girl Campaign.”

“We’re in one little area of China, but if we had resources we could be saving girls all over China. Every little girl who is vulnerable to sex-selective abortion deserves to be saved.”

Learn more about Women’s Rights Without Frontiers “Save a Girl” Campaign here:
http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=give

Read original article written by Elise Harris here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/why-many-women-in-china-wont-celebrate-mothers-day-96721/

Posted in Forced Abortion, gendercide, One Child Policy, Reggie Littlejohn, Save a Girl, sex selective abortion, Steven Mosher, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Without Frontiers, Yang Yuzhi, Zhang Anni, Zhang Lin | Comments Off

Mother’s Day — It’s a Woman’s Right to Give Birth to her Daughter

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

“Eu-Meh,” saved from sex-selective abortion by WRWF’s “Save a Girl” Campaign

This Mother’s Day, let us remember the mothers in China who are not as fortunate as we, who are indeed suffering greatly because of the forced abortion of illegal pregnancies, and also the intense pressure to abort or abandon baby girls, especially second daughters.

The United States Congress recently held a hearing on PRENDA, the Pre-Natal Non-Discrimination Act, designed to protect girls from sex-selective abortion in the United States. Reggie Littlejohn submitted the following Statement to be included in the Congressional Record:

According to a U.N. expert, up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to gendercide, sex-selective abortion. This number is greater than all the casualties of all the wars of the twentieth century combined. This is the true “war on women.”

Sex-selective abortion is the ultimate violence against females. Aborting a baby just because she is a girl is the ultimate act of gender discrimination. It says that females are so worthless we don’t deserve to be born, to draw breath on this earth. Can we credibly say that we stand for women’s rights without standing against the sex-selective abortion of future women?

Sex-selective abortion is strongly related to forced abortion. Some say sex-selective abortion is protected by a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy for any reason. This view ignores the crushing social, economic, political and personal pressures that trample women carrying girls in cultures with a strong son preference. All too often, women in these cultures do not choose to abort their daughters. They are forced.

A woman need not be dragged out of her home and strapped down to a table to be a victim of forced abortion. Persistent emotional pressure, estrangement from the extended family, threat of abandonment or divorce, verbal abuse, and domestic violence often overpower women who otherwise would otherwise choose to keep their daughters. And when people from cultures of violent son preference move to another country, such as the United States, these same pressures follow them.

For example, a 2011 study by Dr. Sunita Puri of the University of California at San Francisco found that 89 percent of immigrant Indian women interviewed in California, New Jersey and New York, who became pregnant with girls during the study period, had abortions. None who were pregnant with boys aborted them. The participants identified pressure from their husbands and mothers-in-law as “sources of significant pressure” for the sex-selective abortion. See, “Pressure to Bear Sons Leads Some Indian Immigrant Women to Sex Selection, Abortion, Study Finds.” http://coe.ucsf.edu/coe/news/sex_selection.html

Systematic, sex-selective abortion constitutes gendercide. Because of this gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million more men than women in China today. The presence of these “excess males” is the driving force behind human trafficking and sexual slavery, not only within China but from surrounding nations as well.

It is a woman’s right to choose to give birth to her daughters. Together, China and India comprise one third of the world’s population. That one-third of the world’s women live in a culture that pressures them to selectively abort girls is the biggest women’s rights abuse on earth. It deserves a passionate response from groups that stand for women’s rights.

Our “Save a Girl” Campaign is saving the lives of baby girls in China. We reach out to women who are contemplating abortion of their baby girls, who are being pressured to abandon their baby girls after birth, or who are so desperately poor that their baby girls are at risk. We encourage these women to keep their baby girls and offer them support for a year to help them care for their daughters. With our intervention, the vast majority of women choose to let their baby girls live and raise them as their beloved daughters. Our Campaign, which has now helped more than 200 baby girls, shows the effectiveness of simple, compassionate intervention. We are working to turn the tide against gendercide in China, one baby girl at a time.

This Mother’s Day, please donate to help us give Chinese mothers have a happy Mother’s Day, by saving their daughters!

Learn more about our Save a Girl Campaign here:

http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion

Posted in China's One Child Policy, coerced abortion, communism, Forced Abortion, gendercide, human dignity, Human Rights, One Child Policy, pro-choice, pro-life, Save a Girl, sex selective abortion, Uncategorized | Comments Off

China Aborts 23 (not 13) Million Per Year — State Department China Report

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

(WASHINGTON) – Forced abortion, sterilization and other abuses were still commonly used to enforce China’s population control policy through 2015, the U.S. State Department has confirmed. In addition, the number of abortions in China appears to be a staggering 10 million higher than the commonly quoted figure of 13 million per year.

The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 released Tuesday said that coercive methods in China generally have “markedly increased” in the last year. Listed among China’s many human rights abuses is “a coercive birth-limitation policy that, despite the lifting of one-child-per-family restrictions, in some cases resulted in forced abortion (sometimes at advanced stages of pregnancy).”

Perhaps most striking is the massive increase in the annual number of abortions in China. The Chinese government has repeatedly reported 13 million abortions a year, noting that according to official Chinese sources, “The number of abortions performed is believed to be higher,” because the statistics were collected only from registered medical institutions and did not include abortions at unregistered clinics.

The State Department Report, however, defines this “higher” number, stating the following at page 55 of the 141-page PDF version:

The National Health Population and Family Planning Commission reported that 13 million women annually terminated unplanned pregnancies. An official news media outlet also reported at least an additional 10 million chemically induced abortions were performed in nongovernment facilities. Government statistics on the percentage of all abortions that were nonelective was not available.

According to information provided by the State Department, therefore, China is not performing 13 million, but 23 million abortions per year. Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, stated, “13 million abortions a year was already an incomprehensible statistic. But to add another 10 million is truly staggering, incomprehensibly tragic. 23 million abortions a year comes to 63,013 abortions a day, 2625 abortions an hour, 43 per minute.

“The population of the United States is about 320 million, with about 1 million abortions per year. The population of China is almost 1.4 billion, with about 23 million abortions per year. Therefore, with four times the population of the United States, China has 23 times the number of abortions.”

The State Department Report is significant not only for revealing the startling increase in the number of abortions performed, but also the brutal methods of enforcement.

“The country’s birth-limitation policies retained harshly coercive elements in law and practice,” stated the Report, which described the government’s “intense pressure” upon police to enforce local birth-limitation quotas.

According to the State Department, laws in 18 Chinese provinces require abortion, sometimes euphemized as “remedial measures,” for illegal pregnancies. Officials in the remaining 13 provinces also were found to have used forced abortion to meet birth limits.

The Report noted that the linking of police job promotion to success in meeting birth quotas “provided a powerful structural incentive for officials to employ coercive measures to meet population goals.”

The Report also confirmed that any woman pregnant outside of marriage breaks the law in almost all provinces, and that so-called “social compensation fees” up to ten times an individual’s disposable income were also levied as punishment under the Policy. Where a couple already had two children, one member of the couple was often required to be sterilized.

“This Report proves what advocates have been saying all along: coercion, forced abortion and involuntary sterilization continue unabated through 2015. They will continue under the Two-Child Policy,” said Littlejohn. “Unmarried women and third children will still be forcibly aborted.”

The State Department Report cited several anecdotal examples of the coercion experienced by Chinese citizens under the Two-Child Policy.

For example, it cited a September case in which a woman complained through social media that local officials threatened to fire her police officer husband if she refused to abort their second child, with whom she was eight months’ pregnant.

The Report also stated that, while officially prohibited, sex-selective abortion “continued because of traditional preference for male children and the birth-limitation policy.” Further, “female infanticide, gender-biased abortions, and the abandonment and neglect of baby girls remained problems due to the traditional preference for sons and the birth-limitation policy.”

Littlejohn, a Yale-educated lawyer and activist against forced abortions in China, joined other activists and U.S. Congressmen at a Congressional hearing on December 3, 2015, to reject the widespread notion that China’s notorious One-Child Policy was “abandoned” when the birth limit was increased in January 2016.

“I know from reports from WRWF’s network in China that forced sterilization and sex-selective abortion have continued under the Two-Child Policy. China’s new Policy is preserving a system of coercion, not ending it,” said Littlejohn. “Coercion remains the core of the policy.”

Sign our petition to end forced abortion here: http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=sign_our_petition

Watch our video, Stop Forced Abortion: China’s War Against Women http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/?nav=stop-forced-abortion

International Planned Parenthood Working Hand in Hand with the Coercive Population Control Machine in China

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

Reggie Littlejohn takes aim against International Planned Parenthood at a rally in Concord, CA Saturday

A National Protest of Planned Parenthood was held this past Saturday, April 23. At the protest site in Concord, CA Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, spoke about her conviction that, posturing as a champion of “choice” in the US, International Planned Parenthood’s true colors show boldly elsewhere on the globe, particularly the People’s Republic of China.

In China, abortion has little to do with a woman’s choice. The world was shocked in 2012 when WRWF released the photograph of Feng Jianmei lying next to her forcibly aborted baby, showing to millions the true face of the Chinese Communist Party.

Meanwhile, International Planned Parenthood is not merely present in China, but their affiliate organization literally works in tandem with the government’s coercive One Child (now Two-Child) Policy.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) first fully associated with the China Family Planning Association (CFPA) as its main access to China in 1983, when forced abortion under the new One-Child Policy was at its height. When CFPA was first created three years earlier, the official communique stated its purpose was to ”implement government population control policies.”

In its first decade, in collaboration with IPPF, CFPA boasts it established a branch in almost every village in China and mobilized as many as 94 million members and volunteers. In fact, China was the second country after New Zealand to become officially recognized as a qualified member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), after CFPA met IPPF’s 65 criteria on sexual and reproductive health issues. All the while, the CFPA was implementing a program that was forcibly aborting and sterilizing women.

Nor is this collaboration on International Planned Parenthood’s part an artifact of the past.

Today IPPF is still CFPA’s main international supporter, and its executives have gone on record praising the achievements of China’s notorious One Child Policy. China’s family planning office, in turn, has expressed the importance of international cooperation for maintaining control over population levels.

In 2009, IPPF director-general Gill Greer called China’s One-Child Policy “very conducive to China’s development in various aspects,” including the realm of “health care services.”

In a 2011 letter to the editor, former Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Norman Fleishman called China’s One Child Policy a “start” to curbing global population.

IPPF’s site points to CFPA as its main operations hub in China and has recently publicized its good relationship with the Chinese government. In 2013, following a change in China’s leadership, IPPF described its meeting with new Chinese premier Li Kequiang and mutual plans to “strengthen the partnership” between China and IPPF.

If Planned Parenthood stands for ‘choice,’ then why are they working hand in hand with the Chinese Communist Party’s coercive population control machine?

Learn more about our “Save a Girl” Campaign:

http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion

Sign our petition to end forced abortion here: http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=sign_our_petition

Watch our video, Stop Forced Abortion: China’s War Against Women http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/?nav=stop-forced-abortion

PRENDA HEARING STATEMENT: It’s A Woman’s Right to Give Birth to her Daughter

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

“Eu-Meh,” one of hundreds of girls saved by WRWRF’s “Save a Girl” Campaign

Note: Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, submitted the following Statement to be included in the Congressional Record at the PRENDA hearing, which was held before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, April 14.

Statement of Reggie Littlejohn, President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers

For example, a 2011 study by Dr. Sunita Puri of the University of California at San Francisco found that 89 percent of immigrant Indian women interviewed in California, New Jersey and New York, who became pregnant with girls during the study period, had abortions. None who were pregnant with boys aborted them. The participants identified pressure from their husbands and mothers-in-law as the reason for the sex-selective abortion. See, “Pressure to Bear Sons Leads Some Indian Immigrant Women to Sex Selection, Abortion, Study Finds.” http://coe.ucsf.edu/coe/news/sex_selection.html

Learn more about our Save a Girl Campaign here:
http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion

Posted in gendercide, pro-choice, pro-life, Reggie Littlejohn, sex selective abortion, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Littlejohn to United Nations: Forced Abortion Is Not the Answer to Climate Change

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

Reggie Littlejohn at the United Nations

The theme for UNCSW 2016 is “Women’s empowerment and the link to sustainable development.” Regarding “sustainable development,” at the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December of 2009, a senior official responsible for the coercive population control famously stated that the One Child Policy was successful in reducing carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

According to Xinhua, Zhao Baige, then-Vice Minister of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, stated:

China’s Population Policy Helps Slow Global Warming, Says Official 12/10/09 (Copenhagen) http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/10/content_12624315.htm

What the Chinese government has not mentioned is the fact that too many of these lives were prevented through forced abortion and involuntary sterilization.

Human beings are not walking carbon footprints.

Forced abortion is not a choice. It is official government rape.

To understand the brutal truth behind forced abortion in China, watch:

Stop Forced Abortion – China’s War on Women! Video (4 mins)
http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/?nav=stop-forced-abortion

In the United States, we’ve had about 55 million abortions since the Roe v. Wade decision. In China 400 million lives have been “prevented.” That is a greater number than the entire population of the United States and Canada combined. In the United States, we have approximately 1 million abortions a year. The Chinese government has reported 13 million abortions a year. That figure works out to more than 35,000 abortions every day, or more than 1450 per hour.

These atrocities continue to this day. China’s new Two-Child Policy will not end forced abortion, forced sterilization or other forms of coercion. Unmarried women and third children will still be forcibly aborted.

The only way to end forced abortion under the One Child Policy is to end coercive population control entirely.

The UNCSW this year is reviewing the 2013 theme, “the prevention of violence against women and girls.” Forced abortion and gendercide under China’s One Child Policy will continue under the two-child policy. Since the UNCSW has stated through its 2013 “Agreed Conclusions” that coercive population control should end, WRWF calls upon the U.N. to take effective action to end it.

This is not a political issue. This is a human rights issue that must be approached as an area of common ground. No one supports the systematic elimination of women and girls.

In China, the birth ratio of girls to boys is the most skewed in the world. The sex ratio at birth has risen from 108.5 in 1982 to almost 118 boys born for every 100 girls born in 2010.

Bottom line: China will grow old before it grows rich. China’s population problem is not that it has too many people, but that it has too few young people.

Finally, a medical study from China has revealed an additional way in which women are victimized by the One-Child Policy: significantly increased risk of breast cancer.

Researchers in China have found that the dramatic rise in breast cancer in China is associated with the prevalence of induced abortions (IA) under the One-Child Policy. The study, conducted by a team of epidemiologists from Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital, analyzed data from over 36 different studies in both the United States and China. Their conclusion:“IA [is] significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among Chinese females, and the risk of breast cancer increases as the number of IA increases.” Specifically, the study found that one IA increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer by 44 percent, two by 76 percent, and three by 89 percent.

The study notes that historically, China has had low breast cancer rates when compared with Western nations, but “the incidence of breast cancer in China ha[s] increased at an alarming rate over the past two decades.” The study notes that this rise “was paralleled to the one-child-per-family policy.”
In our view, the strong association of abortion and breast cancer established by this study brings the women’s rights violations under the One Child Policy to a new level: a woman pregnant in China without a birth permit is subjected to both government imposed forced abortion, and also breast cancer as a result of it. Where abortion is forced, the subsequent development of breast cancer becomes a violation of women’s rights in itself. “China: One-Child Policy Linked to Breast Cancer – Study.” http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/blog/?p=1428. 12/2/13

We are also living the mission every day, around our own kitchen table. With the help of Cong. Chris Smith and other brave souls in the United States and China, we were able to obtain safe passage from China to the United States for Anni and Ruli Zhang, the daughters of veteran pro-democracy activist Zhang Lin, who is currently serving a 3.5 year jail sentence for standing up for 10-year-old Anni’s right to go to school. My husband Robert and I have taken Anni and Ruli into our family and are raising them as our own daughters. Anni has won a piano competition and will play at Carnegie Hall in December!
Every struggling mother in China and India deserves help to keep her daughter. Every little girl deserves to see the light of day.

If you want to join us in this struggle, I would welcome your help. This is beyond David and Goliath. It’s an enormous, long-term battle, but together, we can end forced abortion and gendercide and sweep these atrocities into the dung-heap of history, where they belong.

Learn more about the “Save a Girl” campaign:
http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion

Posted in China's One Child Policy, Chinese Communist Party, coerced abortion, female suicide, forced sterilization, gendercide, human trafficking, One Child Policy, pro-choice, pro-life, rape, reproductive health, reproductive rights, right to choose, Save a Girl, sex selective abortion, suicide, two child policy, Uncategorized, UNCSW, United Nations, war on women, Women's Rights Without Frontiers | Comments Off

International Women’s Day — Stop Sex-Selective Abortion! NIPT in the Bud: Boost in Prenatal DNA Testing Could Target Girls for Sex-Selective Abortion

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Reggie Littlejohn

Following the Chinese government’s misleading announcement that it will “abandon” its One Child Policy, women’s rights in China are in more danger than ever before – especially for baby girls.

Such abuse has been documented in several countries, including the United States and Great Britain, where a government study recently suggested the test might be linked to prenatal gendercide.

Market watchers now predict that NIPT is set for rapid growth under the new Two-Child Policy in China, where baby girls already struggle to survive under a strong cultural preference for males.

“Where brutal son preference meets non-invasive, early sex determination of a fetus, inevitably baby girls will be selectively aborted,” said Women’s Rights Without Frontiers President Reggie Littlejohn in testimony before the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China earlier this month. “Because of its convenience as a simple blood test and its ability to determine gender very early in a pregnancy, NIPT will place second daughters at even higher risk, likely resulting in a rise in sex-selective abortions.”

The demand for NIPT has already grown so strong that Chinese officials last year implemented stricter regulations for its use – apparently with an eye to curbing abuses by expectant families. The restriction was reportedly lifted a few months later.

Sex selective abortions, according to a 2009 British Medical Journal study, account for almost all the excess males in China: in other words, 37 million Chinese men will never marry because their future wives were aborted. This provides a strong demand for trafficking in women and sexual slavery in and around China.

This is the latest example demonstrating that the Chinese Communist Party’s switch to a Two Child Policy will not end human rights abuses. China’s forced population control system remains in place, as do the conditions giving rise to gendercide. Littlejohn continued, “We have saved nearly 200 at-risk baby girls from sex-selective abortion or abandonment. The rise of the NIPT technology makes our ‘Save a Girl’ Campaign all the more urgent.”

Click here to learn more about WRWF’s Save a Girl Campaign.

Click here to sign our petition to the Chinese embassy against forced population control.

Click here to watch a video on forced abortions in China.

WRWF’s Reggie Littlejohn to Testify at the U.S. Congress Thursday

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Reggie Littlejohn

Reggie Littlejohn testifies at the United States Congress, concerning China’s One Child Policy

WRWF’s Reggie Littlejohn will testify at a hearing entitled, “China’s New ‘Two-Child Policy’ & the Continuation of Massive Crimes Against Women and Children.” The hearing will take place on Thursday, December 3 from10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Visitor’s Center, Room HVC 210. The hearing is open to the public, so please feel free to attend.

The hearing will be chaired by Congressman Chris Smith and Senator Marco Rubio. Also testifying will be demographer Nicholas Eberstadt and activist Jennifer Li.

Posted in China's One Child Policy, Chris Smith, coerced abortion, communism, Forced Abortion, forced sterilization, gendercide, Reggie Littlejohn, reproductive health, reproductive rights, Save a Girl, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Without Frontiers | Comments Off