The Horror of Forced Abortions and Sterilizations in China

by Sarah Menkedick · 2010-06-08 09:19:00 UTC
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A steady trickle of stories regarding forced abortions and sterilizations in China continue to show up in the media, demonstrating that the underreported problem continues despite the complaints, outrage, and hunger strikes of Chinese victims and reports from international organizations like Amnesty International.

They are stories of women given injections in their seventh, eighth, and ninth months of pregnancy and forced to give birth to dead babies after days of contractions.

They are stories of women snatched by officials in their last month of pregnancy, dragged to clinics, forcibly injected with solution that induce abortion, and kicked in the stomach.

They are stories of dozens of women rounded up and brought summarily, by force, to a hospital where they are sterilized against their will.

They are stories of doctors working 20-hour shifts to sterilize set numbers of women to meet quotas, and family members being detained to pressure their loved ones into accepting sterilizations.

They are stories of infants drowned, thrown to the ground, kicked, or poisoned, and then found discarded in trash cans or, in the case of twenty-one infants and fetuses, thrown in a river.

They are stories of women being denied choice and denied it in a violent, awful, traumatic way. Forced abortion and sterilization should be condemned across the political spectrum; as Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's Rights Without Borders, put it: "whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, everyone opposes forced abortion because it's not a choice."

Photo credit: BabaSteve

Sarah Menkedick is a freelance writer currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has spent the last five years teaching, writing and traveling on five continents. She regularly writes about women's rights.

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