WHERE PLANNED PARENTHOOD WON:

China's Persecution of Women and Children: More of the Same (Joseph A. D'Agostino, Dec 21, 2004, Human Events)

New House International Relations Committee hearings chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R.-N.J.) and held December 14 told the same old sad story: the Chinese government continues to persecute women who exceed their allotted quota of children. The same basic story has some new twists, however.

Even domestic Chinese population experts now quietly admit that China's population control program coerces women. And, in a new low for the Communist Chinese regime, a peaceful protester against China's one-child policy, Mao Hengfeng, has been imprisoned and is being tortured. Beijing expects its women to submit quietly to the abortions and sterilizations required of them.

Depending on the region, Chinese couples are allowed to have one or occasionally two children. That's it. Any woman who has more than her quota faces heavy "social compensation fees"--up to ten times annual household income in China--and often the following: loss of employment, loss of some health care coverage and educational opportunities for her children, imprisonment, forced abortion, and legally mandated sterilization. Her husband faces the same with the exception of the last two. China, with approximately one-fifth of the world's people, has 56% of the world's female suicides--and participants in the hearings said that they believed that the one-child policy contributes to that statistic.

The World Bank estimates that Chinese women's suicide rate is five times the world average. "Five hundred women a day commit suicide in China," said Smith.

They're only preceding the rest of the country off of the bridge.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 21, 2004 2:15 PM