Business of Life

Chinese activist protesting brutality of forced abortion is kidnapped

Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life or somewhere in between, I can't believe that any American woman or man supports the forced abortions that are going on in China.

In the last few months, some 7000, maybe many tens of thousands, forced abortions have been performed in Shandong province, outside Shanghai. One blind activist, Chen Guangcheng, traveled to Beijing to complain to the central government, journalists and other activists of the "bizarre" brutality of the forced abortion campaign by local government officials in Shandong. According to the San Francisco Chronicle,

Chen was ambushed on the street by plainclothes security officers from Shandong who bundled him into a car and took him back to Linyi. There, Chen found himself under de facto house arrest, where he remains.

It's a horror story of kidnappings, ransoms and brutality against women by local officials that may have widespread consequences to the stability of China. Public protests against corrupt local officials numbered 74,000 last year, up 50% from two years ago. Some of the terrible stories is in the extended entry.

A former employee in the Linyi family planning department, who asked that he be identified only as Cao, said such astonishingly cruel measures were usually carried out by "overzealous" local officials.
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Zhu Hongying, 40, and her husband, Xia Jiandong, 40, who are farmers in Zhai Tian Zhuang village near Linyi, and who already have one son, said they had first heard of the forced abortions in March, when Zhu was five months pregnant.

"We panicked and ran into (Linyi) to hide," Zhu said during an interview that was conducted by telephone because local police had sealed off her area in the wake of Chen's detention. "But to get to us, about a month after we left, they arrested three of my sisters-in-law. So we felt very guilty and went home."

What happened next went beyond her deepest fears, Zhu said: "The people from the family planning department were waiting for us. They demanded 700 RMB (about $90, two months' wages for Zhu) to release my sisters-in-law, and then they pushed me into a van and took me to a local family planning clinic."

There, a group of eight people surrounded her and harangued her to have an abortion.

What they were doing was illegal. By law, only financial and other penalties can be levied against parents who break China's one-child policy. But Zhu said there was no way for her to protest.

"I just kept sobbing and begging, but no one listened," she said. "Finally, I was so weak, I just said 'yes.' Then a doctor came in and gave me an injection in the stomach. After I took the shot, the whole day I didn't feel anything. The second day in the early morning blood and water all flowed out of me. Then the baby came out, but it was dead. It was a boy."

Zhu said gazing at her dead son was the most heartbreaking moment of her life.

After she aborted, her husband said, a nurse came into the room and dumped the baby's body into a black plastic bag, along with all the other discharge.

"She told me to go throw it into a truck, which had a large container kind of thing at the back," said Xia, his voice quavering. "When I opened the door and looked in, it was full of black bags and blood."