WUNRN
http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/blog/?p=1924
China - 20
Years After Beijing, No Progress Ending Forced Abortion in China
Learn more about the “Save a Girl” Campaign:
http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion
By Reggie Littlejohn, Women’s Rights without Frontiers
Video – Stop Forced Abortion in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjtuBcJUsjY
March 19, 2015 - The 1995 Beijing Platform calls
for an end to violence against women, including “Physical, sexual and
psychological violence perpetrated by the State, wherever it occurs.” Paragraph
113(c). Forced abortion constitutes such violence, and yet in the 20 years
since the Beijing Platform, forced abortion continues in China. In addition,
Paragraph 277(c) calls governments and NGOs to “eliminate all forms of
discrimination against the girl child . . . such as prenatal sex selection and
female infanticide . . . ” and yet these practices are rampant in China and
India.
At the 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference, former
First Lady Hillary Clinton boldly proclaimed, “If there is one message that
echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s
rights – and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” Yet, no
substantial progress has been made to eliminate forced abortion or gendercide
since the Beijing Conference. Much work remains to be done and the elimination
of forced abortion and gendercide should be front and center in all discussions
regarding progress of women’s rights (or the lack thereof) in Beijing +20.
It is ironic that the UN is discussing the
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action — focusing on gender equality and
empowerment of women — while blatantly ignoring China’s own intentional,
governmental subjugation of women and girls as expressed through the coercive
enforcement of the One Child Policy. An event discussing forced abortion and
gendercide in China should be held as one of the Plenary Sessions before all
delegates, rather than relegated to various “Side” and “Parallel” events? Is
this an indication that China is so powerful at the U.N. that even the UNCSW is
willing to turn a blind eye to the biggest women’s rights violation on earth
and in the history of the world?
China Will Not Abandon the One-Child
Policy, Despite Reports
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has recently stated
that China is considering a further reform of the hated One Child Policy, giving
rise to news reports with titles such as, “Is China Going to Abandon the One
Child Policy?” My answer to that is an emphatic: No, China is not going to
abandon the One Child Policy.
The Chinese government sees the two-fold
demographic disaster caused by the One Child Policy. First, the policy has
caused a dangerously skewed gender imbalance in which there are 37 million more
men living in China today than women. Second, China does not have enough young
people to support its quickly aging population.
In my opinion, the Chinese Communist Party will
likely announce that soon, all couples can have a second child. But this will
not be the end of the One Child Policy. Women will still need a birth permit
for the first and the second child. Without this permit, they will still be
subject to forced abortion. The core of the policy is not the number of
children the Chinese government will allow women to have. The core of the
policy is that the Chinese government is telling women how many children they
can have, and enforcing that limit through forced abortion, forced
sterilization, and forced contraception – the mandatory insertion of IUDs.
The One Child Policy does not need to be
reformed. It needs to be abolished. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers demands
that the Chinese government cease to interfere with each family’s decision on
how many children they will have. We demand an end to government sponsored
forced abortion, forced sterilization, forced contraception, pregnancy checks
and tracking of women’s menstrual cycles. The entire, vast network of Family
Planning Police must be dismissed.
The women of the world will be free only when
the women of China are free.
“It’s a Girl” – The Deadliest Words
in the World
For most of us, “it’s a girl” is cause for
enormous joy, happiness and celebration. But in many countries, this phrase can
be a death sentence. In fact, the words, “it’s a girl” are the deadliest words
on earth when said at the birth of a child. According to one U.N. estimate, up
to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to “gendercide,” the
selective abortion, abandonment or deadly neglect of baby girls just because
they are female.
On September 18, 2014, it was reported that a
student at Linyi University had given birth in a university bathroom and had
abandoned her newborn daughter in the toilet pipe.
In March 2015, the photo went viral of a father
and daughter handcuffed together as they traveled together to visit family for
the Chinese new year. The father sought to protect his daughter from child
trafficking, because girls are in such short supply.
This is not a pro-choice or a pro-life issue.
This is a human rights issue that must be approached as an area of common
ground. No one supports the systematic elimination of women and girls.
Liu Xinwen
was forcibly aborted at six months in October 2014
Forced Abortion and Gendercide Are Not a Choice.
They are the true “War against Women.” Forced abortion is not a choice.
It is official government rape.
The Chinese Communist Party boasts that it has “prevented” 400 million lives
through its brutal One Child Policy. That is a greater number than the entire
population of the United States and Canada combined. Each one of these 400
million lives “prevented” is a victim of communism. This is the hallmark of
communist regimes: the peace-time killing of their own citizens.
China Has Not ‘Eased’ Coercive Population Control Under it’s One Child Policy.
These atrocities continue to this day.
To learn more about forced abortion in China,
watch STOP FORCED ABORTION, CHINA’S WAR ON WOMEN http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/?nav=stop-forced-abortion
More often than not, gendercide is not a choice
either. There is a strong correlation between sex-selective abortion and
coercion. Crushing social, economic, political and personal pressures in
cultures with a strong son preference trample women carrying girls. All too
often, women in these cultures do not “select” their daughters for abortion.
They are forced.
To learn more about sex-selective abortion in
China and India, watch the trailer to the IT’S A GIRL documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISme5-9orR0
In China, the birth ratio of girls to boys is
the most skewed in the world. The sex ratio at birth has risen from 108.5 in
1982 to almost 118 boys born for every 100 girls born in 2010. India is not far
behind.
Sons traditionally carry on the family name, work the fields, and take care of
their parents in old age. A daughter joins her husband’s family at marriage.
There is a saying: “Raising a girl is like watering someone else’s garden.” The
One Child Policy exacerbates the underlying son preference. When couples are
restricted to one child, women often become the focus of intense pressure by
their husband and in-laws to ensure a boy.
A woman need not be dragged out of her home and strapped down to a table to be
a victim of forced abortion. Persistent emotional pressure, estrangement from
the extended family, threat of abandonment or divorce, verbal abuse, and
domestic violence often overpower women who otherwise would choose to keep
their daughters.
Systematic, sex-selective abortion constitutes gendercide. Because of this
gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million more men than women in China
today. The presence of these “excess males” is the driving force behind human
trafficking and sexual slavery, not only within China but from surrounding
nations as well.
China has the highest female suicide rate of any country in the world.
According to the 2013 U.S. State Department China Human Rights Report, the
numbers of female suicides have risen sharply in the past several years, from
500 women per day to 590.
China’s One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any
other official policy on earth and any other official policy in the history of
the world. This is the true “War Against Women.”
UNCSW’s Agreed Conclusions Condemned
Forced Abortion; They Need to Condemn Gendercide
The UNCSW’s topic for 2013 was “Elimination and
Prevention of All Forms of Violence Against Women and Girls.”
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers was honored to
make four presentations about forced abortion and gendercide in China at the
UNCSW in 2013. We forcefully argued that there is no greater violence against
women than forced abortion, up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Women
themselves sometimes die as a result of these violent procedures. There is no
greater violence against girls than gendercide, which has claimed up to 200
million lives of girls selected for abortion solely because they are girls.
We achieved a partial victory and commend the
following language from 2013’s “Agreed Conclusions”:
34. The Commission urges government, at all
levels, and as appropriate, with the relevant entities of the United Nations
system, international and regional organizations . . . to take the following
actions:
. . . .
(aaa) Condemn and take action to prevent violence against women and girls in
health-care settings, including . . . forced medical procedures, or those
conducted without informed consent, and which may be irreversible, such as
forced hysterectomy, forced caesarean section, forced sterilization, forced
abortion, and forced use of contraceptives . . .
These Agreed Conclusions represent an
acknowledgement that forced medical procedures are a form of violence against
women and call for an international condemnation of such procedures.
While the Agreed Conclusions condemn coercive
family planning in the form of forced medical procedures, they take no stand on
gendercide, the sex-selective abortion, abandonment and fatal neglect of baby
girls. If the UNCSW stands for women’s rights, it must take a stand against the
selective abortion of up to 200 million baby girls. We call upon them to do so
in the Agreed Conclusions for 2015.
WRWF Calls for an Investigation of
UNFPA
The UNCSW, moreover, should follow its own
advice to “condemn and take action to prevent violence against women . . .” by
thoroughly investigating the activities of the UNFPA in China. Former Secretary
of State Colin Powell found the UNFPA to be complicit with coercive family
planning in China. WRWF believes that any independent investigation of the
UNFPA’s current practices would arrive at the same conclusion.
Forced Abortion in China Is Linked
to Breast Cancer in Women and Low Birth Weight, Increased Chance of Death in
Subsequent Pregnancies.
TIANJIN, CHINA. A medical study from China has
revealed an additional way in which women are victimized by the One-Child
Policy: significantly increased risk of breast cancer.
Researchers in China have found that the dramatic rise in breast cancer in
China is associated with the prevalence of induced abortions (IA) under the
One-Child Policy. The study, conducted by a team of epidemiologists from
Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital, analyzed data from over 36
different studies in both the United States and China.
Their conclusion:
“IA [is] significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among
Chinese females, and the risk of breast cancer increases as the number of IA
increases.” Specifically, the study found that one IA increases a woman’s risk
of breast cancer by 44 percent, two by 76 percent, and three by 89 percent.
The study notes that historically, China has had
low breast cancer rates when compared with Western nations, but “the incidence
of breast cancer in China ha[s] increased at an alarming rate over the past two
decades.” The study notes that this rise “was paralleled to the
one-child-per-family policy.”
In our view, the strong association of abortion
and breast cancer established by this study brings the women’s rights
violations under the One Child Policy to a new level: a woman pregnant in China
without a birth permit is subjected to both government imposed forced abortion,
and also breast cancer as a result of it. Where abortion is forced, the
subsequent development of breast cancer becomes a violation of women’s rights
in itself. “China: One-Child Policy Linked to Breast Cancer – Study.”
http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/blog/?p=1428. 12/2/13
Forced Abortion in China Correlates
with Low Birth Weight, Increased Chance of Death in Subsequent Pregnancies
A dissertation submitted to the University of
Hong Kong found that children in China are more likely to face serious health
complications, including death, if their mothers have had multiple induced
abortions. The study concluded that having more than one abortion increases the
risk of low birth weight in subsequent pregnancies. Indeed, women who have had
three or more induced abortions are at five times the risk of preterm birth in
a subsequent pregnancy.
The study, conducted by Cui Limin, explained that nearly two thirds of neonatal
deaths are related to low birth weight. For children surviving infancy, LBW
increases the risk of neuron-developmental problems, respiratory tract
infections, and behavioral problems. According to the study, those with very
LBW suffer from conditions including cerebral palsy, blindness, impaired
hearing and learning disabilities. Besides harming the child, these health
problems put extra financial strain on parents, the study noted.
Women in China are forced into induced-labor abortions, up to the ninth month
of pregnancy. In our view, this is a violation of women’s rights of the first
degree. We are now learning that these forced abortions also put their future
children at risk for respiratory complications, cerebral palsy, and even death
related to low birth weight. They also may damage a woman’s future reproductive
and general health. This is a violation of the women’s rights and the rights of
their future children. Forced abortion must be stopped, and families should be
compensated if their children experience health problems caused by previous
induced labor forced abortions.
According to the study, 14.37 million induced abortions were performed in 2012
– one quarter of the abortions in the world — many of which were repeat
abortions. The study credited the One-Child Policy as “one of the most
important factors for the increased induced abortion rate,” and cited the
prevalence of forced and sex-selective abortions in China.”
There Is Hope: Our “Save a Girl” Campaign
Fortunately, there is hope. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers has launched the
“Save a
This baby
girl from rural China was saved from abandonment by WRWF’s “Save a Girl”
Campaign.
Girl” Campaign in rural China, and we are
stopping gendercide, one baby girl at a time. We have field workers in China
who reach out to women who have had an ultrasound, learned that they are
pregnant with a girl, and are planning to abort or abandon her. A field worker
will visit that woman and say, “Don’t abort your baby just because she’s a
girl. She’s a precious daughter. We will give you a monthly stipend for a year,
to help you support her.” The practical support we offer empowers these women
to keep their daughters.
We are also living the mission every day, around our own kitchen table. With
the help of Cong. Chris Smith, Jing Zhang, Hu Jia and other brave souls in the
United States and China, we were able to obtain safe passage from China to the
United States for Anni and Ruli Zhang, the daughters of veteran pro-democracy
activist Zhang Lin, who is currently serving a 3.5 year jail sentence for
standing up for 10-year-old Anni’s right to go to school. My husband Robert and
I have taken Anni and Ruli into our family and are raising them as our own
daughters.
Every struggling mother in China and India
deserves help to keep her daughter. Together, we can end forced abortion and
gendercide and sweep these atrocities against women into the dung-heap of
history, where they belong.
Learn more about the “Save a Girl” campaign:
http://womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion