Tag: forced

It was an image circulated via Twitter and other on-line resources which set off the recent backlash in China against the practice of forced abortion.

(Via the Daily Caller.)

The mother had been seven months pregnant when she was physically dragged to a hospital and injected with a toxic substance to kill the baby inside her womb. The couple already had one child, and could not come up with the necessary cash to pay a “fine” which would have permitted them to have one more, under China’s one-child policy.

The storm over this continues in China, where this week their space program launched the first Chinese woman into space. On Twitter, the Chinese authority sought congratulatory tweets for this achievement, but received responses such as this:

“China is the only country that is capable of sending a female taikonaut into orbit while at the same time being able to force a seven months pregnant woman to have an abortion.”

Following up on a previous post (“Forced abortion: A tipping point in China?”): Authorities in China have taken steps designed to defuse public outrage after a widely publicized case of forced abortion. The fact of forced abortion (and forced sterilization) is nothing new in China, where a “one-child policy” has been enforced for decades, but what was different in this case was the rapid circulation via the Internet and Twitter of this particular story, accompanied by a photograph of the devastated woman (who had been beaten in advance of the “procedure”) with the bloodied corpse of her nearly full-term child beside her in the hospital. The woman and her husband already had one child, and were unable to come up with a “fine” of 40,000 yuan (roughtly $6,300) which would have “allowed” them to give birth to a second. Continue reading “Suspensions and apology follow forced abortion in China”