A woman was reportedly forced by Chinese authorities to have an abortion at six-months pregnant because she was in violation of the nation's one-child rule.
On Friday, Sept. 27, officials from the Shandong Province Family Planning Commission allegedly forced their way into the home of Zhou Guoqiang and Liu Xinwen, and took her away, according to Sky News. Already the mother of a 10-year-old son, Xinwen was in violation of the population-control policy initiated in 1979. She was brought to the People's Hospital of Fangzi District and given a drug to abort the fetus, Sky News reported.
"They don't have any humanity. They are not humans," Xinwen, who supposedly received a state-ordered contraceptive procedure she called "forced sterilization" after her first child, told Sky News. "They must have children and parents too. But they don't have any conscience. This is how China is."
This is not the first time such a story has made headlines.
Last year, 23-year-old Feng Jianmei was taken from a family member's home by family planning officials in the Shaanxi province, blindfolded and brought to a nearby hospital for a forced abortion, The New Yorker previously reported. She, too, was in violation of the law.
China's one-child policy was instituted more than 30 years ago in order to control the country's growing populace. Today, with the population topping 1.35 billion, the rule is still being implemented, but there are some exceptions. The rich are able to bypass the rule with the payment of a "social compensation fee," or by giving birth somewhere like Hong Kong or America, The New York Times noted in May. Others, however, are not so fortunate. From The Times:
Village family-planning officers vigilantly chart the menstrual cycle and pelvic-exam results of every woman of childbearing age in their area. If a woman gets pregnant without permission and is unable to pay the often exorbitant fine for violating the policy, she risks being subjected to a forced abortion.
In March, the Financial Times reported that the China Health Ministry had released data revealing that 336 million abortions had been conducted since the policy was enacted in the 1970s. In another story on the data, The Telegraph reported that more than 13 million abortions are performed each year, according to "government researchers."
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