Category: International Facts/Quotes

Writer and researcher Gita Aravamudan describes how female babies were killed in villages in India:

“Female infanticide I found had become more “scientific”. Inducing pneumonia was the modern method. The infant was wrapped in a wet towel or dipped in cold water as soon as it was born or when it came back home from the hospital. If, after a couple of hours, it was still alive it was taken to a doctor who would diagnose pneumonia and prescribe medicine, which the parents promptly threw away. When the child finally died, the parents had a medical certificate to prove pneumonia. Sometimes the infant was fed a drop of alcohol to create diarrhea: another “certifiable disease.”

Gita Aravamudan Disappearing Daughters: the Tragedy of Female Foeticide (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books India, 2007)22

They did this because bodies could be exhumed so killing had to be done stealthily

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“Better to Let Blood Flow like a River Than to Have One More Than Allowed.”

“You Can Beat It out! You Can Make It Fall Out!  You Could Abort it! But You Cannot Give Birth to It.”

Posters set up by local authorities in Chinese villages supporting the one child policy.

Mara Hvistendahl Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (New York: Public Affairs, 2011) 142

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On infanticide in India:

“There are about 535,000 traditional birth attendants in Bihar for a population of 100 million. In several districts of the state, [the researcher] found that each midwife killed as many as 5 newborn girls a month. The study, released in 1995, was in a formal exercise, but [the researchers] believe that “if anything, the survey underestimated infanticide.”

An organization called Adithi, founded by Vigia Srinivasan, did the research.

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

 

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In China, women are pressured, and in some cases forced, to abort if they already have one child. Abortion is extremely common and widely accepted. Here are 2 quotes from Chinese women about abortion:

“It’s a rather common occurrence, [like eating] an ordinary kind of food. There’s nothing worth talking about.”

And

It’s a very natural thing, like eating and drinking. It’s not against the law. And it’s quite safe to have [an abortion.”]

Few talk about the one child policy partly due to the fact that you can’t legally criticize the government in China and their one child policy. However, the results of the survey in 1997 done by Nie Jing-Bao gathered the following quotes:

“People have no choice [if they already have a child]; but most women want the babies.”

“Because people want more than one child, the government forces them to have abortions.”

“The family planning program forces people to have abortions. Some are voluntary, but most people have to [have an abortion]. Rural people hope to have more children. Most people in cities accept the family planning policy. Although some want to have more children, they may lose their job if they actually do so.”

In a study, 18 overseas students and scholars who had either just arrived in the United States or who had left China several years before were asked to list the reasons why women had abortions in China.

The number one response was “the requirements of the national family planning policy.”

Nie Jing-Bao Beyond the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005) 98-100

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One researcher commented on illegal abortions which were performed in Australia before the liberalizing of abortion laws:

“Oral histories and memoirs suggest that most women who sought and found abortions had relatively safe operations… Research findings suggest that many or even most women could find a doctor, nurse, or skilled nonmedical provider to perform an “illegal” abortion before the middle of the century.”

Rebecca M Albury Beyond the Slogans: the Politics of Reproduction (St. Leonard’s, NSW Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1999) 7, 13

Legalizing abortion in Australia, like in the US, was not needed because thousands of women were dying from illegal operations. Read about the myth of back alley abortion deaths in America here.

 

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A woman from China who was allowed asylum in the United States had been forced to abort two children. She describes one of her abortions where the baby was born alive:

“I thought she [the baby] was alive. After it was aborted, [the nurse] threw it in the corner on the floor….I told them “It is alive baby, let me have it, raise it.” They said “no, because of the injection, it’s going to die soon….I saw her die and it was very painful. My heart got broken then.”

Chad Skelton “Woman Gets Refugee Status Despite No Fear of Persecution” The Vancouver Sun June 2, 2000

Read about babies born alive after abortions in the United States.

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A study was done where Chinese men and women were interviewed and asked their opinions on abortion. Chinese women are pressured to have abortions if they try to have more than one child. They are fined, and sometimes imprisoned  and forced to abort.

Here are the statistics:

Percentage that considered abortion:

taking a life: 36%

killing an infant: 31%

killing a human being: 27%

among Protestants

taking a life: 64%

killing an infant: 60%

killing a human being: 57%

among Catholics

taking a life: 92%

killing an infant 96%

killing a human being 88%

“Abortion in itself has nothing to do with ethics or morality.”

71% agreed

77% of Catholics disagreed

56% of Protestants disagreed

“Under some situations, it is necessary to force a woman to have an abortion.”

75% agreed

25% of Catholics agreed

According to the author of the study:

“… conversion to Christianity (after having no particular religious commitment) signaled a radical change in attitudes toward the fetus and thus toward abortion.”

Table 4.2 Percentages of Respondents Who Agreed That Abortion Was Equivalent to Taking a Life, Killing an Infant, or Killing a Human Being

Nie Jing-Bao Beyond the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005) 110-112

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