{"id":1373,"date":"2013-09-25T21:15:13","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T21:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/?p=1373"},"modified":"2013-09-25T21:15:13","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T21:15:13","slug":"one-child-policy-still-massive-threat-to-women-expert-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/one-child-policy-still-massive-threat-to-women-expert-warns\/","title":{"rendered":"One Child Policy Still Massive Threat to Women, Expert Warns"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reggie Littlejohn Meets Pope Francis during the 2013 MaterCare International Conference in Rome. Photo Courtesy of Women's Rights Without Frontiers<\/p><\/div>\n

This article is reprinted with the permission of the Catholic News Agency.\u00a0 Read the original article by Elise Harris here: http:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/one-child-policy-still-a-massive-threat-to-women-expert-warns\/<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Rome, Italy, Sep 25, 2013 \/ 04:07 am (CNA\/EWTN News).- In wake of the 33rd anniversary of China’s one-child policy, a women’s rights activist has raised concern about those who believe the policy has ended, warning of the dangers it still poses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one child policy is definitely still happening. Any report that states that China is abandoning the one-child policy is false,\u201d Reggie Littlejohn said in a Sept. 22 interview with CNA.<\/p>\n

Littlejohn is the founder and president of \u201cWomen\u2019s Rights Without Frontiers,\u201d an international coalition aimed at exposing forced abortion, gendercide, and sexual slavery in China.<\/p>\n

Wednesday marks the anniversary of the country’s one-child policy, which was instituted during the Mao era in China in 1979 as a means of population control. The measure restricts most Chinese families to one child each, and uses a quota reward system for the Family Planning Officials who carry out the birth control policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one-child policy causes more violence towards women and girls than any other official policy on earth, than any other official policy in the history of the world,\u201d Littlejohn said, adding that the Chinese communist party has boasted about having \u201cprevented four hundred million lives\u201d through the policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen are forced to abort babies up to the ninth month of pregnancy, and sometimes these forced abortions are so violent that the women themselves die along with their full-term babies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to her advocacy for China’s women, Littlejohn also led the international effort to free Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, who arrived in the United States in May, 2013.<\/p>\n

Known as an international expert on the country’s one-child policy, she has testified at the U.S. Congress as well as the European, British and Irish Parliaments, and has briefed the White House, the U.S. Department of State, and the Vatican on the issues of women’s rights in China. Most recently, she addressed a maternal health care conference in Rome, where she was able to meet Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

Littlejohn rejected media perceptions in the West that the one-child policy is waning, countering that \u201cwhen the Chinese communist party tweaks the policy, makes a minor adjustment to it, for some reason that fact gets reported as ‘China is abandoning the one-child policy,’ which is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to her, coercion involved in the one-child policy is being used to keep the communist party in power.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core of the policy, the centerpiece of the policy, is not how many children the government allows a woman to have, it\u2019s the coercion with which they enforce the limit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Littlejohn added that even if a couple is granted a second child, they would still need to have a birth permit \u2013 if they do not get one, the mother is still subject to a forced abortion until the end of her term.<\/p>\n

Outside of forced abortion, the one-child policy has opened the door to other human rights issues, such as human trafficking and gendercide, Littlejohn said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that the Chinese government imposes this coercive low birth limit, combine that with the preference for boys and what you end up with is sex-selective abortion, or gendercide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now there are thirty-seven million more men living in China than women,\u201d she said, \u201cand that\u2019s driving human trafficking and sexual slavery, not only within China but the surrounding countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Littlejohn said that the coercion used to enforce the one-child policy serves the double purpose to also keep the communist party in place in China, stating that when the policy was initiated, the birth rate was about 5.9, whereas now it \u201cmore like 1.7, which is well below 2.1.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChina\u2019s population problem is not that they have too many people, it\u2019s that they have too few young people. So I believe that it has transformed into a policy of social control that\u2019s a way for the Chinese government to demonstrate its power.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also listed China\u2019s system of informants, who are specifically assigned to watch women and report anyone whose abdomens \u201clook bigger than they should,\u201d and the money that the government makes in profit from the \u201cexorbitant\u201d fines they charge to families with more than one child, among the reasons she believes that the policy is being used to keep the current party in place.<\/p>\n

When the informants catch a woman, Littlejohn said, China\u2019s Family Planning Police come \u201cin the middle of the night, grabbing women out of their beds, strapping them down to tables and forcing them to abort babies they want up to the ninth month of pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a form of violence against women, its official government rape in my opinion, and it\u2019s a way of terrorizing the entire population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Littlejohn emphasized the need to raise awareness about the one-child policy, pointing to the resources on her group’s website as a place to start. The video, \u201cStop Forced Abortion: China\u2019s War Against Women,\u201d gives a short, but good introduction that can easily be shared on social media to help spread information, she said. <\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

She also suggested her organization’s \u201cSave a Girl\u201d campaign, which offers a monthly stipend for a year to mothers who are considering aborting their babies, simply because they are girls, as a way to give assistance.<\/p>\n

After being offered the stipend, in \u201cninety-five percent of the cases, women choose to keep their daughters,\u201d Littlejohn noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I feel sort of frustrated about the enormity of ending forced-abortion in China,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ve got this binder of all these beautiful faces of these baby girls that we\u2019re saving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re ending gendercide, we\u2019re ending forced abortion one baby at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tags: Human rights, One-Child Policy, Violence against women<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is reprinted with the permission of the Catholic News Agency.\u00a0 Read the original article by Elise Harris here: http:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/one-child-policy-still-a-massive-threat-to-women-expert-warns\/ Rome, Italy, Sep 25, 2013 \/ 04:07 am (CNA\/EWTN News).- In wake of the 33rd anniversary of China’s one-child … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[49,30,7,16,15,8,33,20,32,31,124,1,118,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-one-child-policy","category-coerced-abortion","category-forced-abortion","category-forced-sterilization","category-gendercide","category-one-child-policy","category-pro-life","category-reggie-littlejohn","category-reproductive-health","category-reproductive-rights","category-save-a-girl","category-uncategorized","category-war-on-women","category-womens-rights-without-frontiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1373"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1380,"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions\/1380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}