Women rebel over forced abortions
Anger at the regime's extreme birth control regime is growing
Michael Sheridan, Hong Kong
ABUSES of women's reproductive rights, some of which break China's own laws, are provoking outrage as Chinese public opinion wakes up to the persistence of forced abortion, compulsory sterilisation and even infanticide.
China has run birth control campaigns since the 1970s. In 1979 it passed laws restricting city dwellers to one child and rural people to two if the first was a girl or disabled.
Officials say the policy has prevented 300m births and helped reduce poverty, raising life expectancy to 73. But the Chinese population is still growing by 8m-10m a year, or about a million every five weeks, and will do so for several more years.
Open discussion of abuses of the policy has raised hopes among women activists that Hillary Clinton will speak up for them when she makes her first visit to China as US secretary of state this week.
Clinton annoyed the Chinese regime with a speech at a 1995 women's conference in Beijing in which she said: "It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have an abortion or sterilised against their will."
Now Clinton is predicted to tackle Beijing on a broader range of issues than the economics-focused approach taken by the Bush administration. She has signalled that she will take a firmer stand on human rights.
Even as Chinese media and internet commentators break taboos to report birth control abuses, some officials are stepping up humiliating interventions in the lives of women.
Those with one child are likely to face regular pregnancy tests and pressure to be sterilised through a range of financial penalties or the threat of being sacked from their jobs.
Physical coercion to terminate a pregnancy or undergo sterilisation was banned by law in 2002 but numerous reports in the Chinese media claim that it still goes on.
Chinese women are daring to speak out themselves. Zhang Linla, who has a four-year-old daughter, told a website in Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong, that she was subjected to a late forced abortion because she became pregnant again before the period officially allowed between births.
"Six days before the due date, 10 strong strangers came to my house, forced me into a truck then took me to a family planning clinic, where the doctor gave me an injection," she said.
"The child began struggling in my womb and one of these scum even kicked me in the abdomen. Then the baby came out and they threw it into a rubbish bin. I could even see it was still moving."
An even more horrifying story, reported on hundreds of websites, concerned a case of infanticide in Wuhan, central China, last September. A farmer named Huang Qiusheng said his wife, who was nine months pregnant, gave birth to a live child despite being forced to submit to an injection to induce an abortion. The infant was thrown into a urinal.
The next day an elderly woman named Liu Zhuyu heard the child's cries, rescued it, washed it and delivered it to a neonatal clinic. But the reports claim that five family planning officials confronted Liu, seized the child and killed it by throwing it to the ground.
The complexity of family planning laws and their arbitrary enforcement often contributes to cases of cruelty.
This month a newspaper in Yunnan province reported a case of compulsory sterilisation that has appalled commentators. It involved a woman named Zhang Kecui, who was ambushed in the street by family planning officials and dragged on to the operating table for a sterilisation.
Zhang has two children and according to regulations should have been sterilised after the second birth. Her husband has lodged a legal complaint but has little hope of redress.
Sociologists and doctors are beginning to question the long-term effects of the birth-control policy.
"As a woman, I believe that coercing a woman who is eight months pregnant to have an abortion is inhuman," a family planning official, who asked not to be named, told The Sunday Times.
“You wait till Larry comes and I tell him my theory!” The bids, duly sealed, were given into the keeping of the commissary officer to be put in his safe, and kept until the day of judgment, when all being opened in public and in the presence of the aspirants, the lowest would[Pg 188] get the contract. It was a simple plan, and gave no more opportunity for underhand work than could be avoided. But there were opportunities for all that. It was barely possible—the thing had been done—for a commissary clerk or sergeant, desirous of adding to his pittance of pay, or of favoring a friend among the bidders, to tamper with the bids. By the same token there was no real reason why the commissary officer could not do it himself. Landor had never heard, or known, of such a case, but undoubtedly the way was there. It was a question of having the will and the possession of the safe keys. "Well, I believe our boys 's all right. They're green, and they're friskier than colts in a clover field, but they're all good stuff, and I believe we kin stand off any ordinary gang o' guerrillas. I'll chance it, anyhow. This's a mighty valuable train to risk, but it ought to go through, for we don't know how badly they may need it. You tell your engineer to go ahead carefully and give two long whistles if he sees anything dangerous." "Fine-looking lot of youngsters," he remarked. "They'll make good soldiers." "That's just what he was, the little runt, and we had the devil's own time finding him. What in Sam Hill did the Captain take him for, I'd like to know? Co. Q aint no nursery. Well, the bugler up at Brigade Headquarters blowed some sort of a call, and Skidmore wanted to know what it meant. They told him that it was an order for the youngest man in each company to come up there and get some milk for his coffee tomorrow morning, and butter for his bread. There was only enough issued for the youngest boys, and if he wanted his share he'd have to get a big hustle on him, for the feller whose nose he'd put out o' joint 'd try hard to get there ahead o' him, and get his share. So Skidmore went off at a dead run toward the sound of the bugle, with the boys looking after him and snickering. But he didn't come back at roll-call, nor at tattoo, and the smart Alecks begun to get scared, and abuse each other for setting up a job on a poor, innocent little boy. Osc Brewster and Ol Perry, who had been foremost in the trick had a fight as to which had been to blame. Taps come, and he didn't get back, and then we all became scared. I'd sent Jim Hunter over to Brigade Headquarters to look for him, but he came back, and said they hadn't seen anything of him there. Then I turned out the whole company to look for him. Of course, them too-awfully smart galoots of Co. A had to get very funny over our trouble. They asked why we didn't get the right kind of nurses for our company, that wouldn't let the members stray out of their sight? Why we didn't call the children in when the chickens went to roost, undress 'em, and tuck 'em in their little beds, and sing to 'em after they'd said 'Now I lay me down to sleep?' I stood it all until that big, hulking Pete Nasmith came down with a camp-kettle, which he was making ring like a bell, as he yelled out, 'Child lost! Child lost!' Behind him was Tub Rawlings singing, 'Empty's the cradle, baby's gone.' Then I pulled off my blouse and slung it into my tent, and told 'em there went my chevrons, and I was simply Scott Ralston, and able to lick any man in Co. A. One o' their Lieutenants came out and ordered them back to their quarters, and I deployed the company in a skirmish-line, and started 'em through the brush toward Brigade Headquarters. About three-quarters o' the way Osc Brewster and Ol Perry, when going through a thicket, heard a boy boo-hooing. They made their way to him, and there was little Skidmore sitting on a stump, completely confused and fagged out. He'd lost his way, and the more he tried to find it the worse he got turned around. They called out to him, and he blubbered out: 'Yes, it's me; little Pete Skidmore. Them doddurned fools in my company 've lost me, just as I've bin tellin' 'em right along they would, durn 'em.' Osc and Ol were so tickled at finding him that they gathered him up, and come whooping back to camp, carrying him every step of the way." And the rush stopped. Cadnan waited for a second, but there was no more. "Dara is not to die," he said. Then he saw Orion hanging over him, very low in the windy sky, shaking with frost. His eyes fixed themselves on the constellation, then gradually he became aware of the sides of a cart, of the smell of straw, of the movement of other bodies that sighed and stirred beside him. The physical experience was now complete, and soon the emotional had shaped itself. Memory came, rather sick. He remembered the fight, his terror, the flaming straw, the crowd that constricted and crushed him like a snake. His rage and hate rekindled, but this time without focus—he hated just everyone and everything. He hated the wheels which jolted him, his body because it was bruised, the other bodies round him, the stars that danced above him, those unknown footsteps that tramped beside him on the road. Farewell to Jane and Caroline!" HoME大香蕉色人阁 ENTER NUMBET 0017
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MDMA: Utopian Pharmacology
Transhumanism: Brave New World?
Critique of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
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