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China's One-Child Policy Should Be Ended Population, 2006 From Opposing Viewpoints in Context

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children argues in the following viewpoint that China's one-child policy is morally abhorrent because it advocates the use of forced abortion and sterilization, infanticide, and the deliberate killing of orphans through neglect. Further, the society claims that Western governments and population control agencies are in collusion with the Chinese government in implementing the policy, and that only pro-life advocacy groups are willing to speak out against the atrocities. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is a British pro-life advocacy group.

As you read, consider the following questions:

According to the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, how does the Chinese1. government enforce its one-child policy?

What is the true purpose of the Law on Population and Birth Planning, in the authors'2. opinion?

What do the authors argue British people should do to help end China's one-child policy?3.

China's one-child policy has recently been described [by Wendy McElroy] as "arguably the greatest bioethical atrocity on the globe." Since the 1970s, the Chinese government has conducted a programme of population control through forced abortion, infanticide, forced sterilisation, forced use of abortifacient birth control, abandonment of children and deliberate killing of orphans through neglect.

The programme is enforced through severe penalties for those who do not comply with the policy, including extortionate fines, destruction of property, imprisonment and even torture.

Little Protest from the West

Despite over three decades of reports in the West of the crimes of the one-child policy, very little is being done by governments and human rights organisations about the policy. This is partly because

the policy's victims are mainly the unborn, whom the Western world largely neglect, but also partly because many Western governments and wealthy population control agencies support the policy in various ways. Most of the opposition to the policy has come from pro-life organizations like SPUC [Society for the Protection of Unborn Children]. SPUC has in recent years taken a leading role on the issue, working closely with expert groups, in particular the Population Research Institute (PRI) and the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). Pro-lifers are therefore urged to help support the work of this international pro-life coalition against the one-child policy by lobbying politicians, governments and human rights groups.

In 1979 Chinese Vice-Premier Chen Muhua described the one-child policy saying: "A policy of encouragement and punishment for maternity, with encouragement as the main feature, will be implemented. Parents having one child will be encouraged, and strict measures will be enforced to control the birth of two or more babies. Everything should be done to insure that the natural population

growth rate in China falls to zero by 2000."

It has been calculated that between 1971 and 1985 alone there were some 100 million coercive birth- control "operations" in China, including forced sterilisations and forced abortions. In 1983 a massive campaign of compulsory birth control surgeries was carried out, which reportedly produced 14 million abortions, 21 million sterilisations and 18 million IUD [interuterine device] insertions. This campaign was directed by the then minister-in-charge of the State Family Planning Commission (SFPC), Qian

Xinzhong.

In September 2002, the Chinese regime passed the Law on Population and Birth Planning. Misleading claims about the law are being put forward by defenders of the one-child policy, but the law's true purpose is to "uphold a single-child policy for married couples" (article 18; note that unmarried people are not permitted to have children) and to legitimise coercion by reclassifying it as law enforcement. Defenders of the policy also claim that coercive practices are simply "abuses". Rather, the new law is clear that coercion is integral to the policy: family planning minister Zhao Bingli warned that "from the date that the law took effect, those who have an extra-policy birth must face the music."...

Ending the One-Child Policy

Write to your MP [Member of Parliament]:

Informing him/her that China's one-child policy has been made even worse by a new law passed in September 2002.

Asking him/her to write to the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development, Amnesty International and the Chinese embassy to ask them what they are doing to end the one-child policy....

Write to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee:

Informing it that China's one-child policy has been strengthened by a new law passed in September 2002.

Asking it to hold an inquiry into the one-child policy....

Write to Amnesty International UK:

Asking what Amnesty International is doing to end the one-child policy.

Expressing disappointment that its 2003 annual report does not mention the one-child policy.

Asking them why the use of torture and ill-treatment by birth control officials was included in its 2002 annual report but not in the 2003 annual report.

Asking them to raise China's one-child policy in next year's annual report....

Write to the Chinese embassy:

Protesting at the Chinese regime's denial of the right to life of unborn children, its neglect of new-born children and its violations of the human rights of couples.

Telling them that the Chinese regime's attempt to whitewash its new population control law have been exposed in the West.

Informing them that you will continue to protest against the one-child policy until it is abolished.