Category: International Facts/Quotes

President of Women’s Rights without Frontiers describes horrific abuses in China

At a congressional subcommittee on forced abortion in China, Missy Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president, Women’s Rights without Frontiers, said the following:

“In this report we have cases of forced abortion, one woman at 8 months, another woman forcibly aborted with twins at 8 and a-half months; forced sterilization; forced contraception. And these forced contraceptions are not simply the installation of IUDs, which can be very painful, and even, as the witnesses have said today, these IUDs can be installed even though there are medical complications that counterindicate such an installation. But people – the lack of an IUD is used as an excuse for family planning cadres to come in and beat people. I have got a case in here where somebody’s mother-in-law literally had her hand almost broken in half because her daughter-in-law supposedly didn’t have an IUD.

We have got pictures of family-planning police. It looks like a military regiment; family planning jail cells; the demolition of homes, even by relatives. There is a woman here who missed a pregnancy check, and her own relatives were forced to demolish her home. We have pictures on that.

This report also contains accounts of a couple who were brutally tortured because the woman missed her pregnancy check by one day. She was one day late. A man whose head was smashed open and who is now permanently disabled because his wife had a 2nd child. I will show this briefly. But this report is filled with photographs like this. And a father who was beaten to death because it’s on the suspected of having a 2nd child…

Last year, crematorium workers in Guangdong Province found in infant crying in a medical waste receptacle on the way to the crematorium. When they opened it, they found a little baby boy who had cotton stuffed down his throat. Horrified, they sent that baby boy back to the hospital, perfectly healthy, and then that boy was returned to them later that day [dead] without an explanation of the cause of death.

In a separate incident, Xinhua reported that 21 bodies of fetuses and babies were found discarded in a river in East China last year. Xinhua News stated, “The bodies may have been dumped by cleaners from local hospitals after abortions induced labor. Such dead bodies are treated as medical waste by hospitals.”…

I asked organizations like UNFPA and International Planned Parenthood, if they truly stand for choice, if they truly stand for women’s reproductive rights and women’s reproductive health, how come they aren’t jumping up and down about forced sterilization in China?

For example, there was a 20 day campaign launched April 7 of 2010 in Puning City, Guandong Province, aimed to sterilize 9559 people, and they detained 1300 people in that forced sterilization campaign. That campaign was publicized in the London Times. Everybody knew about it. Where was UNFPA? Where was IPPF when this was going on, if they truly are promoting voluntarism in China?

Implication. Now, that is something new that I learned researching this report. The practice of implication means if one person is a violator of the one child policy, then their entire extended family is implicated or punished. So, for example, if I were illegally pregnant, my husband, my parents, his parents, our grandparents, our aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, the entire extended family can have their homes destroyed. In this one incident, Case 12 in Fujian Robin, family-planning officials beat a father to death on the suspicion that his son might have a 2nd child. That is implication.

Then, in another case, the extended family were all dragged into something called the Family-Planning Learning Center, and they were tortured for days on end, and then they were charged tuition, which also brings up the issue of corruption, which I think is a major driving force behind keeping the one child policy in place. People are making a lot of money off this…

Recently, just this year in Linyi County, there was a man who was murdered by family-planning police. They had come to seize his sister for forced abortion. She wasn’t home, so they started beating his father. So when he tried to defend his father one of the family-planning officials just took a knife and stabbed him in the chest, and he died. And these things happen with impunity. People are not prosecuted. They are not held accountable. I would say that really the spirit of the red guard lives on in the family-planning police.”

“China’s One Child Policy: the Government’s Massive Crime against Women and Unborn Babies” Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, Committee of Foreign Affairs House Of Representatives 112th Congress, September 22, 2001

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UN not concerned with forced abortions in China, says woman’s rights leader

Missy Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president, Women’s Rights without Frontiers, said in a 2001 hearing before a congressional subcommittee that UN officials the delegates were not interested in her speech about forced abortion abuses in China. She says:

“I participated in the UN CSW week of – the conference that they give every year. But the issue of forced abortion in China was nowhere on the agenda, and my presentation was not even a side event. It was like a side side event. And yet it is something that affects one out of every 5 women in the world, and it is the biggest just numerically perpetrator of violence against women in the world is this one thing.”

“China’s One Child Policy: the Government’s Massive Crime against Women and Unborn Babies” Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, Committee of Foreign Affairs House Of Representatives 112th Congress, September 22, 2001

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Former Chinese official tells of forced abortions in the 9th month

Rep Christopher Smith related the following at a hearing:

“… I chaired a hearing that Harry Wu helped facilitate where we heard from a woman from Fujian [Chinese] province who actually ran one of the family-planning centers. She was given the pseudonym of Mrs. Gao, because she was fearful of retaliation against her family and extended family still in China. And she said, by night she was a wife and mother, and during the day she was a monster. She self-described as a monster…

She told stories of as late as 9 months gestation, babies, very, very late, just about to be born, children, that women would be pleading with her, please let me have my baby. And to no avail. And they would hold husbands, fathers, until she voluntarily submitted to the abortion.”

“China’s One Child Policy: the Government’s Massive Crime against Women and Unborn Babies” Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, Committee of Foreign Affairs House Of Representatives 112th Congress, September 22, 2001

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Wall Street Journal: female infanticide common in parts of India

An article in the Wall Street Journal describes how some Indian couples are committing infanticide of baby girls, actually killing them outside the womb, rather than screening their pregnancies and getting sex selection abortions.

“In poor and backward places such as Bihar, however, where sonograms are still a rarity, it’s cheaper to kill a newborn girl that to travel to a city and pay for a gender test and an abortion. And Bihar’s gender rate is among the most lopsided in the country. The 1991 census in Bihar showed 912 women for every thousand men, down from 1054 women in 1901. In the district where Dewa is located, the ratio in 1991 was 819 women to 1000 men.

In some pockets of Bihar and  Rajasthan, another poor state, the female to male ratio is a meager 600 to 1000. Last August, one village in Rajasthan witnessed its first Hindu wedding procession to a bride’s home in 110 years, because no other girl had been allowed to survive. ”

Miriam Jordan “Brief Lives” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2000

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Planned Parenthood official praises China’s “one child” policy of forced abortion

“China’s “one child” policy… is a start… the world is doomed to strangle among the coils of pitiless exponential growth.”

Planned Parenthood official Norman Fleischman

Quoted by New Jersey Representative Chris Smith

“China’s One Child Policy: the Government’s Massive Crime against Women and Unborn Babies” Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, Committee of Foreign Affairs House Of Representatives 112th Congress, September 22, 2001

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Steven Mosher describes scene of forced abortion in China

Steven Mosher was an anthropology student in Stanford University’s PhD program who witnessed how Chinese women were forced to have abortions during fieldwork in China. He’d originally been pro-choice and supported population control but described:

6 months
6 months

“There were 18 women, all from 5 to 9 months pregnant, and many red eyed from lack of sleep and crying. They sat listlessly on short plank benches arranged in a semi circle about the front of the room, where He Kaifeng, a commune cadre and Communist Party member of many years standing, explained the purpose of the meeting in no uncertain terms. “You are here because you have to “think clear” about birth control, and you will remain here until you do.”…

[After reasoning and bribery failed to convince the women to have abortions]

“None of you has any choice in this matter. You must realize that your pregnancy affects everyone in the commune, and indeed affects everyone in the country.” Then, visually calculating how far along the women in the room work, he went on to ask, “The 2 of you who are 8 or 9 months pregnant will have [an abortion by] cesarean; the rest of you will have a shot which will cause you to abort.” Several of the women were crying by this point.”

Steven Mosher, Broken Earth: the Rural Chinese (New York: Free Press, 1983) 225

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Female infanticide in India takes horrible toll

Author Miriam Jordan described this state of affairs in India in a 2000 article:

“In poor and backward places such as Bihar, however, where sonograms are still a rarity, it’s cheaper to kill a newborn girl that to travel to a city and pay for a gender test and an abortion. And Bihar’s gender rate is among the most lopsided in the country. The 1991 census in Bihar showed 912 women for every thousand men, down from 1054 women in 1901. In the district where Dewa is located, the ratio in 1991 was 819 women to 1000 men.

In some pockets of Bihar and  Rajasthan, another poor state, the female to male ratio is a meager 600 to 1000. Last August, one village in Rajasthan witnessed its first Hindu wedding procession to a bride’s home in 110 years, because no other girl had been allowed to survive.

Miriam Jordan “Brief Lives” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2000

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A terrible scene of postabortion women in China

Representative Chris Smith told the following story at the Hearing before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 112th Congress, First Session. September 22, 2011:

“Over the years, I have chaired 29 Congressional human rights hearings focused in whole or in part on China’s one child per couple policy. At one, the principal witness, Wuijan, a Chinese student attending a US university, testified how her child was forcibly murdered by the government. She said, and I quote in part:

“The room was full of moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some moms were crying. Some moms were mourning. Some moms were screaming. And one mom was rolling on the floor with unbearable pain.”

Then Wuijan said it was her turn, and through her tears, she described what she called her “journey in hell.”

Read one Chinese woman’s testimony about the 5 abortion she was forced to have here.

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While president of feminist group praises the one child policy, Chinese woman undergoes five forced abortions

Molly Yard (president of NOW, The National Organization for Women, a proabortion feminist group, at the time) in response to a question on the Oprah Winfrey Show:

“I consider the Chinese government’s policy among the most intelligent in the world. It is a policy limited to the overpopulated areas, and it is an attempt to feed the people of China. I find it very intelligent.”

As quoted by Gary Bauer “Abetting Coercion in China” The Washington Times, Oct 10, 1989

Meanwhile, in China, Liu Ping was the victim forced abortions in China. When she married her husband, she was supposed to be fitted with an IUD, as all married women were required to be. However, she was suffering from kidney disease and the IUD was too much of a health risk. From her testimony.

“From 1983 to 1990, because of the one child policy, I had to undergo five forced abortions on the following dates: September 28, 1984; December 17, 1985; March 20, 1986; May 5, 1989; and December 14, 1990.…. I suffered greatly at the hands of the inhumane one child policy.

In the 1980s, shortly after implementation of the one child policy in China, there were many severe methods of surveillance and punishment to prevent unplanned pregnancies and above quota births. My factory’s Family-Planning Commission used three levels of control: at the factory level, in the factory clinic, and on the factory floor. There was a system of collective punishment. If one worker violated the rules, all workers would be punished. Workers monitored each other. Women of reproductive age can account for 60% of my factory floor. Colleagues were suspicious and hostile to each other because of the one child policy. Two of my pregnancies were reported by my colleagues to the Family-Planning Commission.

When discovered, pregnant women would be dragged to undergo forced abortions. There was simply no other choice. We had no dignity as potential childbearers. By order of the factory’s Family-Planning Commission, every month during her menstrual period, women had to undress in front of the birth planning doctor for examination. If anyone escaped this examination, she would be forced to take a pregnancy test at the hospital. We were only allowed to collect a salary after it was confirmed that we were not pregnant.

The day of my fifth and last abortion, December 14, 1990, was the saddest day of my life. Because I was not able to prove that I wasn’t pregnant within the 10 to 15 day period, the birth planning doctor in the factory clinic found out about my pregnancy. That day, officials from the factory’s Family-Planning Commission forced me to be driven to the City Police Hospital and forced me to have an abortion in the birth planning department. It was my first operation in that hospital. All my previous abortions took place in the Central City Hospital.

I did not know what officials in my factory told the doctors. After the abortion, the doctors, without my knowledge, implanted a metal IUD in my body. When I learned of the procedure, I protested that I had a kidney disease and could not keep the IUD, but they completely ignored me. The doctor just gave the bill to my husband and told him to pay. While my husband argued with the doctors, I was recovering in the hospital bed. When I left the operating room, still weak, I could not find my husband. I was told that he was arrested. I collapsed crying from the physical toll of the two of operations and the emotional shock. A kind nurse tried to comfort me somewhat, but she was shood away by a man who also threatened to have me arrested by the police.

By this time, the family-planning officials who dragged me to the hospital were nowhere to be found. I felt alone, sick, and weak. Afterwards, I learned that my husband had been sentenced to criminal detention without a trial for violating and obstructing the one child policy, disturbing the normal operations of the hospital, and disturbing social peace. Fifteen days later, my husband was finally released to return home.

I was in great pain from medical IUD, and the weakness of the abortion, and almost did not want to live. The rest of my husband deprived me of the care of my family. My young child did not know what was happening and kept crying for his father. I did not know what to do and could only hold my son and cry with him.… Those painful fifteen days of separation became the catalyst of my eventual failed marriage.

My body suffered great damage from all those five forced abortions. I gradually grew afraid of family life with my husband. I tried to find excuses to refuse any intimacy demands for my husband. I grew to hate him after the IUD was inserted because I blamed my sufferings on him, on his unwillingness to be surgically sterilized. He had known of my kidney disease, but would not make any sacrifice for me, and therefore, he didn’t love me.

After the fifth abortion in the IUD insertion, my factory also gave me a serious administrative warning and find me six months wages. Afterwards, I had to go to the factory clinic every month for exams to make certain that I had not privately taking out the IUD or become pregnant again. I carry the IUD in my body for over a decade before finally came to America.”

Liu Ping eventually moved to the United States, divorced her husband, became a Christian, and subsequently reconciled with her husband. She claims to have found healing through her religion.

She told her story before the Hearing before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 112th Congress, First Session. September 22, 2011

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Midwives in Indian Village are paid 10 x more money if they kill a newborn baby girl

“The village of Dewa lies in Bihar state, where fully 10% of India’s 1 billion inhabitants live. It is the country’s poorest state, with a dearth of doctors in remote areas and thousands of midwives. The midwives earn about $.50 and a sack of grain for each live delivery of a girl, twice as much plus a sari if it is a boy. Getting rid of a newborn female fetches as much as $5.”

Miriam Jordan “Brief Lives” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2000

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