My name is Jordan Ordway and I am a 3L at Regent Law. This semester I have had the privilege to work with the Center for Global Justice student staff, working on a research project for ADF International Asia. My research includes studying the abortion polices of Asian nations. While there are many approaches to regulating abortion and family planning around the world, China in particular has a policy unlike any other.
In the Bible, when the Israelites asked for a King, God issued a warning through the prophet Samuel. Samuel warned that earthly rulers tend to claim rights over citizens: over citizens’ crops, supplies, and—worst of all—over citizens’ own children. This warning is embodied today within China’s population planning policies.
Under the guise of preserving economic and natural resources, the Chinese government launched an approach to curbing population growth in the 1970’s. The “Late, Long, and Few” program was meant to be temporary, giving incentives and rewards for families who only had one child. In 1980, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the policies to be mandatory on all Chinese families with few exceptions.
Decades of sex selection, abandoned children, and forced abortions were the heartbreaking result. To begin with, the original one-child policy mandated that families needed to obtain permission from local officials before having a child, leading to many “illegal children” being confiscated by authorities (reportedly later being sold by the government). Moreover, female infanticide became the infamous norm in China, with many Chinese families opting to have a male child over female. Scarier yet are the draconian measures used as a punishment for families who did not adhere to the government’s policy, which include forced sterilization and forced abortions.
China has sporadically adjusted its one-child policy throughout the years. In 2016 many Western nations cheered when the Chinese Communist Party announced it was ending the one-child policy to allow all Chinese couples a second child. The celebration, it seems, is premature. While every couple in China is now allowed a second child four years after the birth of their first, other restrictions have not been relaxed. Among other things, the Planned Birth Policy forbids out-of-wedlock births and childbearing without permission—even if it is a couple’s first child. Women who violate these rules are still subjected to fines (averaging three to four times a family’s income), forced abortion, and/or forced sterilization.
Despite a supposed shift to a new dawn in reproductive “freedom” for women in China, the Chinese government still dominates over its citizens’ rights. Recently, there has been an outcry for change to these policies across the world. This outcry no doubt is due to stories such as Feng Jianmei’s, whose story in 2012 went “viral” when photos of the forced abortion of her seven-month-old child were put online. However, even with this outcry official Chinese state outlets have denied any imminent change to the country’s national two-child policy in 2018.
This post was written by a Center for Global Justice student staff member. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of Regent University, Regent Law School, or the Center for Global Justice.