Hearing on China’s 1-child policy: victims recount brutality

September 29, 2011

Victims spoke of the horror of China’s one-child policy during a recent US congressional hearing held on the thirty-first anniversary of its implementation.

“It is an insidious policy causing the society to immediately demand an abortion for any woman without a birth permit, married or not,” said Chai Ling. “To refuse would be illegal, but most unmarried women like me don’t even dare to ask and certainly don’t tell others about it, but silently suffer in a country with the highest female-suicide rate in the world, 500 women a day, every day.”

Liu Peng recounted:

There was a system of collective punishment: If one worker violated the rules, all would be punished. Workers monitored each other. Women of reproductive age accounted 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 simply was no other choice

We had no dignity as potential child-bearers. By order of the factory’s Family Planning Commission, every month during their menstrual period, women had to undress in front of the birth-planning doctor for examination. If anyone skipped the examination, she would be forced to take a pregnancy test at the hospital. We were allowed to collect a salary only after it was confirmed that we were not pregnant.

 

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Further information:

• A Plea for China From Capitol Hill (National Catholic Register)
• Testimony of Chai Ling (All Girls Allowed)
• Women’s Rights Without Frontiers