My Own Prison

Outrage over picture of Chinese forced abortion at nine months

The forced abortion was carried out by Chinese family planning authorities in the town of Moshan, because the parents already had one child. Prison Planet reported the parents were hunted down and the mother injected with poison to induce an abortion. The report said after "the baby was 'pulled out inhumanly like a piece of meat,' it was still alive and began to cry before doctors slung the defenseless child into a bucket and left it to die."

According to a commentator on Beijing Shot monetary rewards are offered to women who agree to abort their children in order for family planning authorities to meet their targets. If the birth quota is exceeded then the whole village faces a penalty.

The general impression is that China's one child policy has relaxed somewhat in recent years, but the reality is that cruel pressure is still applied in many areas of the country. It appears that China's one child policy still operates under the draconian sanctions described by Stephen W. Mosher in "A Mother's Ordeal", first published in the U.S. in 1993. The book documents the harrowing ordeal of women subjected to forced abortions and the methods employed to prevent the babies being born alive and then discarded in waste receptacles.

To avoid the unpleasantness of listening to a baby's death cries this could cause for the doctors involved, injections were given to cause the fetus to be stillborn, or the baby's skull would be crushed with forceps during delivery. Another method used was to inject formaldehyde into the baby's brain as it entered the birth canal to ensure a dead birth.

International Affairs Review reported the one child policy has now resulted in a demographic imbalance whereby China has a lower ratio of workers to retirees. There is also a severe gender imbalance as many female babies were the victims of infanticide in the quest for the only child to be male.

The report of the nine-month-old baby thrown in a bucket to die has been used by some of press to draw attention to the dangers of implementing a policy to control population growth in the West, which some advocates of population control have suggested as strategic policy for the future.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/322260