Chinese Woman Forced to Abort 8-Month-Old Fetus

[no_hypocrisy]

BEIJING (AP) — A pregnant woman in south China was detained, beaten and forced to have an abortion just a month before her due date because the baby would have violated the country's one-child limit, her husband said Thursday.

Construction worker Luo Yanquan said his wife was taken kicking and screaming from their home by more than a dozen people on Oct. 10 and detained in a clinic for three days by family planning officials, then taken to a hospital and injected with a drug that killed her baby.

Family planning officials told the couple they weren't allowed to have the child because they already have a 9-year-old daughter, Luo said.

For the last 30 years, China has limited most urban couples to just one child in a bid to curb population growth and conserve its limited resources. China has the world's largest population, with more than 1.3 billion people. Couples that flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.


-more-


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/10/21/world/asia/AP-AS-China-Forced-Abortion.html?hp

[hlthe2b]

1. That would be one trauma I doubt one would ever get past.

It is one thing to make the considered decision to have an abortion--quite another to have one forced upon you. Sad...

[musette_sf]

5. As sad as a woman being forced

to bear a child she doesn't want?

[hlthe2b]

6. I certainly don't condone that...

but to be honest, yes... I think being strapped down against your will, while others abort a late stage child that you WANTED, might actually be emotionally worst than being forced to bear a child that you don't want, but could give up for adoption. Now don't start in. I am as pro-choice as they come and I think this is a repugnant possibility to a rape/incest victim or other woman who had made an alternate choice. I'm purely talking about the emotional impacts, short and long term. If it were me, I could see myself getting emotionally past the second possibility far more readily than the first.

[Crunchy Frog]

14. Yes, I think so too.

I can't imagine a horror worse than having my almost full term, wanted, child forcibly killed. For me it wouldn't be much different than having my already born child killed, except that the forcible violation of my own body would be part of the process.

If anyone's offended by my saying that, they can bite me.

[uppityperson]

9. Choice is choice and being forced either way is wrong.

[musette_sf]

10. Of COURSE I agree that being forced either way is wrong.

Here is what bothers me about this sensationalistic news story, and seeing it propped up in the Choice group:

It's the FACT that this story is written to generate general outrage against forced abortions... and that NEITHER of the posters I responded to in this thread would or could acknowledge that FORCED BIRTH is (at the very least) an EQUAL outrage.

This article, and the initial posts about it, said NOTHING about "being forced either way is wrong". This article, and the initial posts about it, were specifically intended to elicit horror, when the far, far greater number of anti-choice horrors go on every single day all around the world. For the most part, THOSE horrors are minimized, and the women subjected to forced birth are viewed as "selfish" for wanting to terminate.

Yes, being forced either way IS wrong.... but this article, and the initial posts about it, posited a false equivalency between an alleged incident that was highly dramatized in the article, and the tragedy of forced birth and involuntary slavery that countless women around the world have struggled with for millennia and continue to struggle with to this day. I want for progressives to be at least EQUALLY HORRIFIED, and ideally MORE HORRIFIED, at a woman being forced to be pregnant and give birth against her will.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Sherman A1]

2. Sad

[musette_sf]

4. As sad as a woman being forced

to bear a child she doesn't want?

[Rage for Order]

20. No. n/t

[musette_sf]

3. Too bad that many people aren't able to work up the same level of empathy and horror

for a woman who is forced to bear a child she does not want.

No empathy for women whose health plans won't cover prescription birth control.
No empathy for women who don't have a health care plan and can't afford prescription birth control.
No empathy for women who get harassed and stalked by complete strangers when attempting to access reproductive health control options.
No empathy for women who don't have the time and money to get to the reproductive health care clinic (maybe the ONLY one in her state) - transportation money, money to take time off from work, money to provide for child care while on the trip (if needed), money to stay overnight or longer in states with lengthy "waiting periods", money for the procedure itself.

Funny how this doesn't strike the hearts of many as "horror". But one woman in China, who knew the law, going all drama queen over being forced to terminate, THAT'S a "horror".


:nuke:

[hlthe2b]

7. You are WAY off base. assuming WAY too much...

but I really don't wish to get into it with you, since you seem totally unwilling to acknowledge that one can be offended, disgusted, and shocked by the RW's suggestion that choice be removed from a rape/incest victim (or any other woman, regardless of circumstances) and by this situation in China with forced abortion. Guess, what? Pro-choice means supporting both the right to have or NOT to have a child.

[Sherman A1]

8. Agreed & Well Said

It is a very sad situation when anyone is forced to do something against their will.

[musette_sf]

12. I do hope you feel EQUALLY sad

when women are forced to be pregnant and give birth against their will.

[Sherman A1]

13. Well,

Had you read my post which I quote "It is a very sad situation when anyone is forced to do something against their will."

Perhaps you just might have noted that it said "when anyone is forced to do something against their will".


Was that too complex a sentence?

[iverglas]

19. I'll go with MORE sad

"when women are forced to be pregnant and give birth against their will"

since that situation occurs millions of times a year all over this world, and the one this thread reports on may occur a few times now and then in one country (although there are undoubtedly other situations in which coercion is exercised against women trapped in patriarchal social structures, and different reasons for that).

Kinda like how I tend to think of the killing of thousands in civilian populations by invaders and occupiers as more sad than any individual homicide.

One big reason being that it saddens me more that an entire society would behave so evilly, or that a dominant group in a society would treat another entire segment of the society so evilly, than that one evil individual, or even a group of evil individuals, would.

[musette_sf]

11. All I am saying is

that I want progressives to be EQUALLY offended, disgusted and shocked at forced birth and involuntary servitude, as some seem to be at this alleged report. The article was written to elicit a certain response. If only progressives as a whole would as vehemently decry forced birth and involuntary servitude.

[iverglas]

15. local family planning officials in China

They have been known to go rogue occasionally.

The event described in this report does not reflect official Chinese government policy, and is not representative of practices condoned by the Chinese government.

... Any more than, say, Sheriff Joe Arpeio's actions, including the homicides committed under his instructions, represent the U.S. justice system. I guess the difference would be that the Chinese family planning officials in question will likely face disciplinary action, as has occurred in such cases in the past.

[musette_sf]

17. + 1

for added info and insight on kneejerk article (placed as anti-choice chum in NYT for the pre-election cycle?)

[iverglas]

16. hmm; did we all read the full article?

Some more rather interesting bits.

The case is an extreme example of the coercive measures Chinese officials sometimes use to comply with the strict family planning regulations. Though illegal, police and judicial authorities often look the other way when forced abortion cases are reported and the heavily censored state media shy away from such news.

... An official with the Siming district family planning commission, which oversees Luo's neighborhood, confirmed there was a record of Luo's wife, Xiao Aiying, undergoing an abortion recently but said the procedure was voluntary and that she was about six months instead of eight months pregnant at the time. Like many Chinese bureaucrats, he refused to give his name.

China bans forced abortions, but doesn't prohibit or clearly define late-term abortion.

The actions were illegal, if the events occurred as reported by the woman's husband. If it is true that authorities "often look the other way", there is obviously inadequate protection against such acts.

Myself, I'm not particularly happy about calling something "an extreme example of the coercive measures Chinese officials sometimes use" without saying what they are. The actions as described seem like a little more than "coercive measures", and I'd like to know what other measures are being referred to. What I'm seeing is a rather mushy effort to malign China's population control efforts.

It's just interesting that something like the NY Times would see fit to report on what amounts to a he-said they-said situation, and talk so vaguely about the context.

[musette_sf]

18. + 1, and proof that the NYT is not the "liberal" bastion it's accused of being

and for added info and insight on kneejerk article (placed as anti-choice chum in NYT for the pre-election cycle?)