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Yesterday marked the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, as the Supreme Court handed down their infamous decision in 1973. What fewer Americans know is that the Chinese government, six years later in 1979, not only embraced elective abortions but made forced abortion a matter of policy for millions of Chinese families, especially the poorest ones.<\/p>\n
While the pro-life and pro-choice movements disagree on many issues, here is one issue where we should be able to join hands and join forces.\u00a0Despite the furor created on the internet this past summer by a picture of Feng Jianmei \u2014 whose blood-covered seven-month-old daughter appeared in the photo beside her on a hospital bed \u2014 there was relatively little outrage directed at the Chinese government from foreign governments or NGOs that advocate for women\u2019s rights. Nor do the names of\u00a0<\/span>Pan Chunyan, whom officials abducted from a grocery store and subjected to an abortion at 8 months, or Zhang Wenfang, who was involuntarily sterilized after her 9-month-old baby was aborted, appear in the news outside of a handful of pro-life and faith-based websites.<\/span><\/p>\nThe NGO All Girls Allowed<\/em>\u00a0estimates that ten percent of abortions in China are coerced. According to its own statistics, the Chinese government performed 13 million abortions in 2008 and 400 million abortions since the policy was inaugurated in 1979. That means that the government may force abortions on 1.3 million women annually, and that the total number of forced abortions could be at least 40 million. Other human rights abuses (1,484 cases of political and religious prisoners, 4,500 executions, 40,000 committed to psychiatric hospitals, 80,000 evictions) affect far fewer people and yet they\u2019re reported much more frequently.<\/p>\nThe Chinese government prides itself on liberating women from backwards, feudal traditions and empowering them to become Politburo members, billionaires and astronauts. But China is the only country in the world where more women than men \u2014 40 percent more, in fact \u2014 take their own lives. \u201cThe Global Burden of Disease study conducted by the World Bank, World Health Organization and Harvard University, identifies China with 56.6% of all female suicides worldwide, an astonishing figure considering that only 21% of the world\u2019s female population lives in China.\u201d No one has been able to research the link between forcible abortions and sterilizations and the high rate of female suicides, but the relationship between violence, depression and suicide among women is well documented.<\/p>\n
Chen Guangcheng, a blind activist, was outraged enough by this policy to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of 130,000 women in his county who were forcibly aborted or sterilized. His actions landed him in jail, and then under house arrest, for a total of 7 years. Chen\u2019s activism has been lauded by the international human rights community. Mo Yan, China\u2019s first Nobel laureate in literature, also documented the bitter reality of the coercive enforcement of the one-child policy in his novels. But the same activists and politicians who laud Chen and celebrate Mo pay much less attention to the issue that concerns them. When pressed, Planned Parenthood and Amnesty International will oppose forced abortions and sterilizations, but more often than not they are simply silent. Even worse is when foreign politicians, like Vice President Joe Biden, tell Chinese officials that they will not \u201csecond-guess\u201d their policy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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Forced abortion and sterilization are gross violations of a woman\u2019s physical integrity. They\u2019re a form of torture that should outrage anyone who cares about justice for women \u2014 but they\u2019re greeted with deafening silence because of the battles over elective abortions in the West. The politics of abortion in the West makes normally outspoken women\u2019s advocates reticent. The U.N. women\u2019s agency prominently displays its work in China against domestic violence, but says nothing of the threat that forced abortion and sterilization pose to the health and well-being of a far larger number of Chinese women. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n
The Executive Director of U.N. Women, Michelle Bachelet, has spoken of the need for access to abortions, but made no mention of coercive abortion. Amnesty International\u2019s annual report on human rights violations in China covers freedom of expression, human rights defenders, disappearances, evictions, death penalty, freedom of religion and Tibet and Xinjiang \u2014 but makes no mention of forced abortions and sterilizations. Many women\u2019s advocates have demanded an explanation from the Irish government over the death of Savita Halappanavar, who suffered a miscarriage and was denied an abortion. Yet far fewer demand that the Chinese government bring their domestic law in line with international legal protections of the right to \u201cfound a family\u201d in the Universal Declaration Human Rights or the requirement that states ensure victims of torture \u201credress\u201d and the \u201cright to fair and adequate compensation\u201d as required in the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.<\/span><\/p>\nFeng Jianmei\u2019s case became notorious because someone took a picture that angered Chinese citizens and created a public relations problem for the government. For most women, however, there\u2019s no one standing by to document that horrible moment when the government violates their bodies and destroys their children. These women and their stories should not be forgotten because of our angst over abortion in the West.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNo one can be pro-woman but neutral on forced abortions. Even those who wish to protect elective abortions should wish to prevent forced abortions. The sheer violence and pain they inflict upon women should be enough to bring all of us to work together for change.\u00a0We who have the freedom to speak out should use that power for Feng Jianmei and the millions of women like her.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Rick Santorum<\/strong>, a former representative and senator from Pennsylvania, ran as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. He is the founder of\u00a0<\/em>Patriot Voices<\/em><\/a>, an organization to mobilize one million conservatives committed to promoting faith, family, freedom, and opportunity. I\u2019m grateful to the Santorum team for allowing me to publish this original piece as a guest post at Philosophical Fragments.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I cannot think of any political figure who has stood more staunchly and more effectively for the rights of the unborn than Rick Santorum. In the guest post below, Senator Santorum speaks to a global policy issue of great importance. Whether people are too intimidated by the Chinese government, whether they value their economic cooperation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":3582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1321,121,1159,1158,442,332,1376,1160],"class_list":["post-3581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abortion","tag-abortion","tag-china","tag-forced-abortion","tag-one-child-policy","tag-pro-choice","tag-pro-life","tag-rick-santorum","tag-sterilization"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/46\/2013\/01\/rick-santorum.jpg\" "\\"rick-santorum\\"")
<\/a>The West\u2019s Deafening Silence on China\u2019s Forced Abortions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n