Category: Quotes

A woman from China describes how birth permits were given to certain women describes how birth permits were given to certain women. Those who did not get a permit and became pregnant had to abort.

“The son and daughter-in-law of the cook who lived upstairs was not so well-connected. Their names did not appear on the red poster. [That announced those who received a quota to have a child. Chi An got one because of her mother and her mother’s connections]

My mother, who had long been friends with the cook’s wife, decided that she would go cheer up the young couple… She came back half an hour later looking distressed. “The daughter-in-law is already pregnant,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “She conceived 2 months ago. The baby is due in January. She and her husband were hoping that they would receive a quota so that they can keep this child. Now it is impossible. “The baby will not wait another 18 months to be born,” the cook’s wife told me.

“Her entire family is very upset,” Mother went on. “And I don’t blame them a bit. To tell someone to destroy a growing baby for lack of a quota seems unnecessarily harsh. But that is what the authorities will do, as soon as they find out the daughter-in-law’s condition. They will instruct her to take remedial measures.”…

“Remedial measures” was the standard official euphemism for abortion…

I was off the next day when my mother’s friend from the street committee dropped by. “Congratulations,” she said when I opened the door. “I came to give you your authorization to conceive and bear a child. We call it a Shengchan xuke zheng, a birth permit.” She handed me a pink slip of paper. “Be sure you keep the birth permit in a safe place,” she cautioned. “You will need to present it at the hospital when you go to have your baby. Otherwise the hospital will have to take remedial measures.”

Stephen W Mosher A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight against China’s One Child Policy (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993)  171 – 172

“Remedial measures” is an extreme euphemism for abortion. A woman forced to take remedial measures would be given an abortion against her will and against the father’s will, if he wanted to have the baby.

On China’s “one child” policy – China now allows 2 children, but forced abortions continue.

“Insider accounts of China’s family planning program have been rare – and are always published under pseudonyms – no doubt for fear of government reprisals…., a Chinese journalist (“Liu Yin”) was allowed to accompany the members of a family planning “task force” on a daily raid whose mission was to arrest eleven women who had become pregnant without authorization. Her account, which was published in a British newspaper, describes how five of the women were forcibly dragged from their homes in the middle of the night and taken to the county hospital. The other six had fled, but their families were warned that “if [the women] did not go to the abortion center within a week their houses would be pulled down. This was no bluff. On the way back from the raid, I saw six collapsed houses. No family in the village is allowed to provide shelter for the people whose houses had been destroyed.”

Later, the journalist visited the hospital itself, where she saw “hundreds of women – some more than six months pregnant –… packed in dark corridors and makeshift tents, waiting to be operated on in the “abortion center” in the hospital courtyard. Next to it was a public toilet. I went in: there was simply nowhere you could put your feet; it was filled with bloodsoaked toilet paper. Behind the toilets stood a line of waste–bins: the aborted babies – some as old as eight months – were put there, then dumped somewhere else.”

The Independent, September 11, 1991

Stephen W Mosher A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight against China’s One Child Policy (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993)  x–xi