By Madhavi Rao ’24
Staff Writer
Content warning: the following piece discusses abortion, forced abortion and forced sterilization.
In a ten-year development plan released on Sept. 27, the Chinese government announced a commitment to reduce the number of “non-medical” abortions conducted in the country. The announcement was published alongside upcoming educational reforms and family-planning initiatives meant to improve the sexual health and safety of Chinese women. However, considering the country’s history of intrusive practices concerning reproductive rights, including recent allegations of forced sterilization in Xinjiang, this vow could have a negative impact. As reported by The Associated Press, the Chinese government has been enforcing birth control, sterilization and abortion on Uighurs and other racial minority groups in Xinjiang in order to restrain the Muslim population. In 2018, the birth rates of Uighurs in Xinjiang dropped to 10.69 percent compared to the roughly consistent 15 percent from 2010 to 2017.
The government’s intention to reduce abortions is mentioned in one line in an extensive plan concerning reproductive health. In a subsection containing strategies to promote reporductive education and health, a phrase simply reads, “reduce non-medical abortion.” Access to contraceptives and sexual education were also listed among these strategies.
A recent census report reflected a slowdown in the yearly average rise of reproduction in China, with the rate dropping from 0.57 percent in 2000-2010 to 0.53 percent in the last decade. From 2019 to 2020, the population decreased by 18 percent. This population concern has led some, according to The Guardian, to link the recent ban on abortions to these demographic concerns.
“Rather than the abortion policy, the government and society have focused on the two-child policy and the three-child policy,” a Chinese student at Mount Holyoke College, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of harming her future professional career, explained. “Not only the abortion policy, but also the education reform that has recently attracted widespread public attention in China, serve the population policy to some extent.”
In 2015, China terminated its one-child policy, originally implemented in 1979 to limit families to one child in an attempt to control overpopulation in the country. China’s population has since slowed to its lowest growth rate since 1950, leaving the country vulnerable to a demographic crisis, according to Reuters.
One repercussion of the one-child policy was that individuals often decided against having children at all, according to The New York Times. In an attempt to increase the subsequently decreasing population, the government implemented the three-child policy in 2021, allowing each family up to three children. As several generations grew up with the one-child policy, most young adults in China are used to small families. In addition, with growing costs of living, people are less inclined to have larger families, according to BBC News.
China has a history of physically enforcing these reproductive policies. During the years that the one-child policy was in place, “the authorities subjected countless women to forced contraception, forced sterilization and forced abortion, especially in the 1980s and 1990s,” as reported by Human Rights Watch.
“When I was small, China had the single child policy. This policy affected lots of people: women were forced to abort and were sterilized. People still think of it as a nightmare,” a Mount Holyoke senior from China, who wished to remain anonymous due to fears of retaliation in their professional life, explained. “The policy changed so quickly that nowadays the government encourages people to raise three children per family. Because of the economic situation where people spend more and more money on children’s education, raising kids has become an expensive project.”
The anonymous senior continued, saying, “I understand that because of the single child policy, the government is facing a society with too many old people and a smaller working population. But changing the vow to three children per family or reducing abortions cannot make the society a pregnancy-friendly place where people want to have kids. They still need to do more to make the society a perfect place for pregnancy, and reducing abortions is not the way.”
A plan released in 2011 included similar policies concerning abortion. Feng Yuan, the founder of Equality, a feminist organization in Beijing, told The New York Times, “This isn’t a new policy. But before, people didn’t pay attention to it. It’s a reflection of the fact that, under the new pressure to have children, people have a new mentality when reading policies.”
“The Chinese government has a record of enforcing birth policies that blatantly violate reproductive rights, such as implementing forced birth control measures and limiting women’s access to healthcare,” Kai Ong, a researcher for Amnesty China, told The Guardian. “[The vow to reduce abortions] could further restrict women’s access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, especially for unmarried women and same-sex couples.”