China's One-Child Policy Leads To Coerced Abortion, Sterilization, Columnist Parker Writes

Although "no one supports forced abortion," coerced abortions and involuntary sterilizations "are commonplace in China" under the country's one-child policy, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker writes in the Washington Post. The Chinese Communist Party "insists that abortions are voluntary" under the policy, but "electronic documentation recently smuggled out of the country tells a different story." The documentation was presented to members of the House Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on Tuesday, Parker says.

The evidence presented by ChinaAID and Women's Rights Without Frontiers included "tales of pregnant women essentially being hunted down and forced to submit to surgery or induced labor," Parker continues. Citing a conversation with Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of WRWF, Parker writes that a woman who does not have a "birth permit" or has an "out of plan" pregnancy "has to surrender her unborn child to government enforcers, no matter what the stage of fetal development."

Parker continues that China's one-child policy "has created other problems that threaten women and girls," including sex-selected abortions that have led to men outnumbering women by 37 million. The U.S. "is in an awkward position with China, our second-largest trading partner and the largest holder of our government debt," Parker writes. She concludes, "On this much, both sides of the abortion issue can agree: Forced abortion is not a choice. Averting our gaze from China's horrific abuse of women is" (Parker, Washington Post, 11/11).


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