On March 21, 2011, Family Planning Officials entered the home of Xu Shuaishuai to seize his sister for a forced sterilization. Unable to find her, they beat Xu’s father. When Xu defended his father, one of the Family Planning Officials stabbed him twice in the heart with a long knife. Xu died on the way to the hospital.
This murder is a shocking and extreme example of how coercive family planning presses fear into the hearts of the Chinese people every day. Women who become pregnant without a birth permit-illegally pregnant-are terrified of discovery and forced abortion. Fathers feel helpless to protect their wives and children. Paid informants-friends, neighbors, co-workers-tear down trust in Chinese society. Family members are detained and tortured.
The One Child Policy, moreover, is causing a demographic disaster for China. Due to the traditional preference for boys, girls are disproportionately aborted. This “gendercide” has given rise to a critical gender imbalance: there are now an estimated 37 million more men than women in China. This gender imbalance is a driving force behind sexual slavery, not only in China but in the surrounding countries as well.
How does this affect us? We (the people of the United States, England, and other nations) are helping finance the infrastructure used in coercive family planning in China. The international community funds UNFPA, United Nations Family Planning Fund, as well as IPPF, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Marie Stopes International. These organizations are operative “abortion providers” in China. How many of these abortions are forced?
In 2008, then Secretary of State Colin Powell found that UNFPA was complicit in coercive family planning in China. The IPPF website openly declares, “The China Family Planning Association (CFPA) plays a very important role in China’s family planning programme. It supports the present family planning policy of the government, which is appropriate for the present national situation . . .” The web site for Marie Stopes International, lists as “major partners” the Family Planning Commissions of several provinces in China.
Why are we financing the infrastructure of forced abortion in China with taxpayer money?
Reggie Littlejohn is president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.
