China victims decry forced late-term abortions

‘ Very inappropriate things’
Zhai Zhenwu, a sociology professor at the People’s University Institute of Demographic Studies in Beijing, said that while forced, late-term abortions do still occur sporadically, they have fallen sharply.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, he said, some family planning officials “were really radical and would do very inappropriate things like take your house, levy huge fines, force you into procedures.”

Things have improved since a propaganda campaign in 1993 to make enforcement more humane and the enactment of the family planning law in 2001, he said. Controls have been relaxed, allowing couples in many rural areas to have two children under certain conditions.

Still, Radio Free Asia reported this year that dozens of women in Baise, a small city in the southern province of Guangxi, were forced to have abortions because local officials failed to meet their population targets.

In the province’s Bobai county, thousands of farmers rioted in May after family planners levied huge fines against people with too many children. Those who didn’t pay were told their homes would be demolished and their belongings seized.

Couple files suit
Yang and Jin are suing the Family Planning Bureau in their county of Changli for $38,000 in medical expenses and $130,000 for psychological distress.

But it’s not about the money, said Yang, a fast-talking chain-smoker. No longer able to afford to run his business, he now works as a day laborer in Qian’an, an iron mining town east of Beijing.

“What I want is my child and I want the court to acknowledge our suffering,” he said.

A family planning official in Changli justified Jin’s abortion on the grounds she lacked a birth permit. The woman, who would only give her surname, Fu, said no one in the clinic was punished for performing the procedure.

The National Population and Family Planning Commission, the agency overseeing the one-child policy, says it is looking into Jin and Yang’s case. Meanwhile, the evidence appears contradictory.

Jin’s medical records include a doctor’s certificate from 2001, the year after the abortion, confirming she could not have children. Doctors in Changli county say they examined her in 2001 and 2002 and found nothing wrong with her.

The court ruling says Jin agreed to have the operation. Jin says the signature on the consent form is not hers but that of Di, the official her husband courted.

Speaking out for the baby
Sun Maohang, another of the Yangs’ lawyers, doubts the court will rule for the couple lest it encourage further lawsuits. But he hopes the case will stir debate and lead to clearer guidelines on abortion.

As she waits for the next round in court, Jin says she is too weak to work and has been celibate for years because sex is too painful.

Her husband prods her to tell her story, but during an interview she sits silent for a long time and finally says she doesn’t want to talk about the past because it’s too sad.

Then she quietly insists the lawsuit is something she has to do for Yang Ying, the baby girl she carried but never got to see or hold.

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