This morning I awoke to a wonderfully uplifting story on NPR news: a region of southwest China has recently forced hundreds of women to go to the hospital and have abortions. Many of these abortions are late-term and one report included a woman who was due to give birth in just a few days.
Government-coerced abortions are not news in China. But this incident is different because China recently passed new laws that relax their family planning restrictions and supposedly make these kinds of atrocities a thing of the past. The report stated that this is likely happening because local officials need to lower the population growth rate for the year or risk being fired. I guess they figure their jobs are more important than the lives of hundreds of families.
China talks very nice. But they absolutely must step up to the plate of humanitarian reform. The United States is supposed to be a powerful nation that believes in the welfare of the little man. We put ourselves out as an example of human rights and democracy. And yet we do so very little to hold China accountable.
Yes, the State Department may occasionally make statements and toothless demands. That, however, is little more than politics and diplomacy. It’s like telling the school bully that it wasn’t cool to stuff the nerd in his locker but then going and playing basketball with him all afternoon anyways.
If we as a nation had as much integrity as we claim, we wouldn’t stand for this. We would place severe sanctions on China and ask other UN members to do the same. We would make it clear that China’s policy of treating human life like garbage is unacceptable. The US has the power to do this. China is certainly powerful and, to a great extent, quite scary. But they aren’t stupid or suicidal. If the US and the EU stood together on a human rights issue then China would not be able to ignore it.
Since the creation of the new family planning laws, China has ostensibly been punishing people who coerce abortions. That’s a good thing. But in this case, the likely reason why these things are happening is a government quota regarding population growth that carries with it a risk of job loss for local bureaucrats. That sounds to me like things still aren’t quite working at the national level. And the Chinese government needs to be held accountable for atrocities that occur in their nation.
atrocities coerced abortion human rights issue npr news rights and democracy southwest china us integrity