OpEd: China Will Not Crackdown on Forced Abortions

China has vowed to crackdown on “sex-selective
abortions” to close the gender gap, according to an AP report on Tuesday. Don’t hold your breath.

A BBC News article, “China acts to protect baby girls,” reported the
same vow in 2004. Zhao Baige, then deputy director (and now vice minister)
of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, vowed
seven years ago: “Illegal sex determination and sex-selective abortion
must be strictly banned … China has set the goal of lowering the sex
ratio to a normal level by 2010.”

The result? In 2004 there were 117 boys born for every 100 girls born.
In 2011—a year after China had vowed to bring sex ratios to a normal
level—there are now 119 boys born for every 100 girls born. The
gender gap has not closed, but widened.

Same government. Same vow. Should we expect a different result?

We remember Zhao from the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. Leading the
charge to define human beings as walking carbon footprints, she stated:

“The [Chinese One Child] 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. The 400 million births prevented as a result of China’s
policy since it was introduced in the 1970s, and the drop in the
child-per-couple average from 5.8 to 1.8, resulted in 1.8 billion fewer
tons of carbon dioxide being emitted each year.”

Zhao’s statement inspired a spate of articles extolling Chinese-style
population control to combat global warming. CNN’s Ted Turner injected
new energy into this movement during the 2010 climate change conference
in Cancun, Mexico, when he stated that the whole world should adopt the
One Child Policy.

Make no mistake. China’s One Child Policy is enforced through forced
abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide. Women are dragged out of
their homes, strapped to tables and forced to abort babies they want,
up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Women sometimes die during these
violent procedures. The One Child Policy is China’s war on women.
Adopting it worldwide would hurl women’s rights back to the dark ages.

Click here to sign a petition against forced abortion in China.

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Reggie Littlejohn is the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.