Forced abortion in China (NPR)

Feminists, and humans of good will, it is time to do something about the cruelty and human rights abuses in China.  China's repressive one-child policy has long been known to lead to female infanticide and sex-selection abortion.  A very moving and horrific report on Forced Abortions in China on NPR this morning will leave you stupefied.  Here's the face of a woman who was forced to abort at 7 months pregnancy.  I can not imagine her pain.

“The doctor said it was a boy. My friends who were beside me said the baby's body was completely black. I felt desolate, so I didn't look up to see the baby.”

Comments

[Stewart]

I'm skeptical of this story. It's pretty frightening if it's true, but the sources are quite limited. I've tried to uncover other reports of this, but they are all circulating the same story, and it's almost all from pro-life Christian groups, with NPR being the lone exception. It's not an NPR original story, though. The page you linked to is circulating the same report as the others.

The original report comes from a pro-life Christian organization (CAA), related to them by a pro-life Christian pastor. And the motivation?

The recorded birth rate was 13.61 percent, slightly higher than the goal of 13.5 percent. This is significant because the career prospects of local officials depend upon meeting these goals.

That's not even a statistically significant deviation. Yet some unnamed "local officials" coerced unamed doctors and unnamed officers to force 61 largley unnamed women to have dangerous abortions, all in defiance of Chinese law? Frankly, that doesn't seem plausible to me. And I'm clearly not the only one, because no other Chinese or International press has shown interest in this story.

But it fits with the China-represses-Christians motif, so dozens of pro-life organizations are parroting it as if it were a proven fact. Congratulations on joining the ranks of their objectivity.

[seeker]

NPR is not the usual conservative shill. Are you saying that they haven't done their homework?

[seeker]

BTW, the problem with getting accurate information out of China has more to do with their repressive, secretive communist government. Our experience with such governments in history shows that they do much worse things than are commonly known.

I am not surprised by the allegations of forced abortions, female infanticide, and the killing of dissidents for the organ market. Not because I want such stories to be true, but because Communism (our "best" example yet of atheism turned into government) has a track record.

[Louis]

I agree about the character of the Chinese gov't: I have long despised them for their manifold human rights violations. Forced abortion is a crime against humanity.

btw: this has nothing to do with atheism, so please quite dragging that into things.

[Stewart]

I didn't say anything about NPR being a "conservative" anything. I think this story is probably bogus, though. I would certainly consider it a possibility that the Chinese government forces abortions. In this case, however, there is nothing credible to recommend the story, and most of the reports read like thinly-veiled editorials.

[seeker]

BTW, your incredulity is not called for. Even Amnesty International has been reporting on forced abortions in China. Aren't they credible to you?

And how about this from The Independent

Sources in Linyi City and its surrounding counties claimed that up to 120,000 women had been coerced into submitting to the procedures and that some of them were in the ninth month of their pregnancies.

The fact is, China is rife with human rights abuses, a legacy of their Communist (atheist) world view. And they should be taken to task for it.

Unfortunately, pro-choicers have a hard time opposing forced abortions because they don't want to endanger abortion on demand in general. Tough to fight such a horrible injustice when you want to support a related one.

[Silver Hallide]

legacy of their Communist (atheist) world view. And they should be taken to task for it.

This is still their world view. China is still communist with a mixed capitalist economy.

Unfortunately, pro-choicers have a hard time opposing forced abortions because they don't want to endanger abortion on demand in general

This, I believe is the fall-out from a cultural backlash against female babies and government limitations on a number of children a couple can have due to population control laws.

I think that in general terms you are right when it comes to pro-choicers having a hard time reconciling the two especially when they rely on the surface cause of forced abortions instead of the root.

The issue in China is problematic and is not necessarily tied to their atheistic views, but centuries long social stereotypes with regard to male babies.