BEIJING, CHINA. Xinhua News Agency reported today that China will move to a two-child policy for all couples, \u201cabandoning its decades-long one-child policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Characterizing this latest modification as \u201cabandoning\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
The reason given for this adjustment is entirely demographic: \u201cto balance population development and address the challenge of an ageing population.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Noticeably absent from the Chinese Communist party\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Coercion is the core of the policy. Instituting a two-child policy will not end forced abortion or forced sterilization.<\/p>\n
The problem with the one-child policy is not the number of children \u201callowed.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Further, instituting a two-child policy will not end gendercide. Indeed, areas in which two children currently are allowed are especially vulnerable to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of females. According to the 2009 British Medical Journal study of data from the 2005 national census, in nine provinces, for \u201csecond order births\u201d where the first child is a girl, 160 boys were born for every 100 girls. In two provinces, Jiangsu and Anhui, for the second child, there were 190 boys for every hundred girls born. This study stated, \u201csex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males.\u201d Because of this gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million Chinese men who will never marry because their future wives were terminated before they were born. This gender imbalance is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in women and sexual slavery, not only in China, but in neighboring nations as well.<\/p>\n
Sending out the message that China has \u201cabandoned\u201d 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\u2019s 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, and the baby girls of China, who continue to face sex-selective abortion and abandonment.<\/p>\n
The one-child policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be abolished.<\/p>\n
Sign our petition to end forced abortion: BEIJING, CHINA. Xinhua News Agency reported today that China will move to a two-child policy for all couples, \u201cabandoning its decades-long one-child policy.\u201d Characterizing this latest modification as \u201cabandoning\u201d the One-Child Policy is misleading. A two-child policy will not end … Continue reading
\nhttp:\/\/womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org\/index.php?nav=sign_our_petition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"