Chinese Mother Testifies About 13 Million Forced Abortions a Year – It Amounts to ‘Torture’
(CNSNews.com) – At a hearing [1]of the Congressional Executive Commission on China on Thursday, a Chinese woman who is pregnant with her second child -- and who fled to the United States with her husband and son -- said the official government policy change from one-child to two will not stop forced abortions that number at least 13 million a year and amount to the “torture” of Chinese women.
“A majority, but not all, families will meet the criteria and be allowed to keep their second child,” Sarah Huang – not her real name – said in her prepared testimony, which she gave from an undisclosed location through an interpreter. “However, clearly China’s change to a two-child policy is not enough.”
“Chinese families who attempt to have two children could still be subject to coercive and intrusive forms of contraception and forced abortions, which amount to torture,” Huang said.
“The Chinese government data report that 13 million abortions are performed each year, for an average rate of 35,000 abortions per day,” Huang said. “I personally believe the number is much higher because these statistics only include hospitals that report their figures and most abortions occur in unauthorized ‘black’ clinics or at home.”
Huang said she believes the number of abortions annually in China is closer to 20 million a year.
Huang told CNSNews.com that she hopes the American people will “encourage China’s government to abolish totally their family planning and to relinquish control of women’s womb.”
The hearing, entitled “China’s Announced ‘Two-Child Policy’ & the Continuation of Massive Crimes Against Women and Children,” included other witnesses who said the new policy will not end forced abortions and sterilizations in China.
“China plans to maintain its iron grip over the wombs of women,” Reggie Littlejohn, president of the human rights advocacy group Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, said in testimony at the hearing.
“The Chinese Communist Party will continue to intrude into the bedrooms and between the sheets of the families in China, requiring an arduous process to obtain a ‘birth permit,’ a system of paid informants, and ultrasound checks to make sure that a woman’s IUD is still in place,” said Littlejohn.
“Coercion is the core of the policy,” she said. “Instituting a two-child policy will not end forced abortion or forced sterilization.”
“The Chinese government will continue to brutally control family life as it does most other aspects of Chinese life,” said Rep Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who is co-chairman of the commission. “The ‘one-child policy’ may possibly become a ‘two-child policy’ but China’s police state population-control policies will not end anytime soon.”
“The Chinese government retains the power to tell couples what their families must look like and the power to punish those who disobey birth quotas,” Smith said. “For the past 35 years the Chinese government has wasted precious human potential and sanctioned state-sponsored violence against women and children--enabled by pro-abortion groups globally and the United Nations Population Fund.”
“No one should applaud China’s announced ‘two-child’ policy, instead we should be insisting they abolish intrusive and abusive birth restrictions forever,” Smith said.
“Ultimately, China’s new two-child policy is as indefensible and inhumane as the one-child policy it replaces,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), co-chairman of the commission, said in a prepared statement [2]on the hearing. “In fact, China’s new policy should be known as the ‘forced abortion of child #3’ policy.”
“China needs to recognize that its problem isn’t that it has too many innocent children; it's that they have too many repressive communist adults with blood all over their clenched iron fists,” Rubio said.
“It would be a mistake to assume this change in any way reflects a newfound respect for human rights by Beijing,” Rubio said.
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