Chinese Women Still Subjected To Forced Abortions

By Rep. Chris Smith

WASHINGTON - - In accordance with federal law, the State Department issues an annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - - a virtual handbook of the status of human rights in 194 countries around the globe.

As chairman of the International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee, I receive the report on behalf of the Congress. Subsequently, I host a series of hearings to sift through the State Department's analysis and spotlight testimony from both government officials and leading non-governmental international human rights experts.

Year after year, the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been one of the most consistently, brutal offenders, systematically abusing fundamental human rights. Tragically, it is common for China's communist regime to harass, intimidate, imprison, and torture its citizens because of their views on religion, democracy, freedom of the press, and even their desire to have a family with more than one child.

The totalitarian government in China continues to subject women to forced abortions and sterilization under the guise of family planning. The unspeakably brutal one-child-per-couple policy continues unabated, making sisters and brothers illegal in Communist China - - an absolute outrage.

Regrettably, the 1999 State Department report on China is not as frank as it should be. Instead it employs a few rhetorical phrases - - "doublespeak" - - meant to soften the inescapable horror one feels when reading of the human rights abuses the Chinese government continues to perpetrate on its citizens. These phrases, however, provide a stark example of how bad things really are for the Chinese people.

For example, according to our State Department in the 1999 report, "in rural areas, couples are generally allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl. ... [F]amilies whose first child is handicapped are also allowed to have another child." The reader, I suppose, is expected to rejoice in the government's lapse in an otherwise systematic program of brutality. But in reality, the very idea that the State Department would boast that China "allows" a second child in some limited cases, not to mention China's obvious disdain for handicapped and female children in this policy, speaks volumes about our State Department's complicity in the problem.

The undeniable truth is that the Chinese government allows few couples to even have a second child. That's what the focus of the State Department should be.

The implications and effects of China's one-child-per-couple policy are horrible. The mind set that it suggests is that female and handicapped children are useless - - naturally the government needs to make an exception, allow for a future birth, should a couple be faced with such an eventuality. We all know that the law is a teacher. This law teaches that female and handicapped children are useless, indeed, might as well never be born.

This becomes all too obvious when one looks at the numbers in the report. Right now, the World Health Organization estimates the male to female birth ratio in China at 117 to 100, whereas the statistical norm is 106 to 100. The inevitable question then arises: What happened to all the baby girls? The answer, sadly, is all too clear. The report states, "These skewed statistics reflect ... the abuse of sonograms and the termination of pregnancies based on the sex of the fetus. Female infanticide, abandonment, or neglect of baby girls are also factors." Because of societal pressures instituted by law in China, little girls are often abandoned or neglected so that the parents can try for a male child.

It is important to understand that it is not only baby girls or babies with disabilities who fall victim to China's coercive population control program. Intense pressure is placed on women to abort their unborn children as a matter of course in China. When a child is conceived in an "unauthorized" pregnancy, the mother is paid multiple visits by the "family planning" workers and pressured to abort. If an unauthorized child is born, the penalties include fines, withholding of social services, demotion, and other administrative punishments that sometimes result in the loss of employment.

The fines are often prohibitive; in Shanghai, for example, the fine is three times the combined salary of the parents. There are reports of unpaid fines resulting in the confiscation or even destruction of homes and personal property by local authorities. Arrests and imprisonment are common too.

In recent years, the evidence has multiplied that these coercive practices are not isolated abuses by local officials, but rather, that they are in fact an integral part of China's stringent "birth quota" policy. Because of last year's defection by the head of a birth control clinic, Mrs. Gao Xiao Duan, we now know that the PRC program is more coercive than ever.

Mrs. Gao, who appeared on Ted Koppel's Nightline program, also testified at one of my hearings. She said that as the director of a so-called "planned birth clinic," she was responsible for implementing the Chinese government's official population policy for 14 years. She said that when unauthorized pregnancies are discovered, tremendous pressure is placed on the woman and her family to have the abortion. She said there are even prison cells in the birth control clinics to detain women (and sometimes their family members) until they agree to have abortions or to be sterilized.

Breaking into tears before the subcommittee, Mrs. Gao confessed, "[For] 14 years, I was a monster in the daytime, injuring others by the Chinese Communist authorities' barbaric planned birth policy. But in the evening I was like all other women and mothers, enjoying my life with my family. I couldn't go on living with such a dual life anymore."

As appalling as the reports from China are, the most painful matter is the lack of outraged response. Rather than the widespread condemnation of the atrocities committed in the name of "family planning," the seeming reaction has been to turn a blind eye in the name of trade relations or the pursuit of keeping abortion on demand legal.

In fact, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) continues to be a leading international supporter and apologist for China's population control policy. The executive director of UNFPA has commented, "China has every reason to feel proud of and pleased with its remarkable achievements made in its family planning policy and control of its population growth over the past 10 years. Now the country could offer its experiences and special experts to help other countries."

Despite the mounting evidence of coercion in China's one-child-per-couple policy, the UNFPA continues to condone, support, and underwrite the program. This year, the UNFPA is sponsoring a new 4-year/$20 million program in China. Rather than pressure the Chinese to eliminate the coercion in the program, UNFPA simply sent them a big check with no guidelines or strings attached. According to UNFPA, "the Chinese government ... will be in charge of coordination, internal monitoring, guidance and evaluation." I guess UNFPA thinks the fox should be allowed to guard the henhouse.

There is no doubt that the culture of death which has reared its ugly head in the U.S. has reached a pinnacle in China. Now we need to work to roll back the horror in every way possible. We need your prayers, your hope and your speaking out. Please call your congressional representatives at (202) 224-3121 and let them know you do not want your tax dollars going to subsidize UNFPA, and let them know the U.S. needs to take a lead in pressuring China to stop killing their most helpless citizens, the unborn.