Family Planning in China

Andrea Kalfoglou of our Editorial Board blogs:

This may be old news by now, but on April 23rd, NPR reported that dozens of women in China were forced to have abortions of wanted children in southwest China. A family planning official in Baise say these claims have been investigated and were fabricated; however, human rights officials say that, Liang Yage and his wife Wei Linrong reported that Wei was forceable taken to the hospital in Basie city and was injected three times in the abdomen. Sixteen hours later her child was stillborn. She had been seven months pregnant with her second child. He Caigan, an 19 year old unmarried woman days away from delivery, was also forced to have an abortion, which has left her in physical pain and abandoned by her boyfriend. An anonymous eyewithess said he counted 41 occupied beds on just one floor of the maternity hospital in Baise and he believed that none of the women he saw had come to the hospital of their own free will. The NPR reporters speculate that these forced abortions may be a reaction to published population statistics that show the Baise government missed its family planning targets last year.