Warning: this story may be distressing to some readers.
This woman’s name is Feng Jianmei. She was seven months pregnant when the Government forced her to have an abortion two weeks ago.
Twenty-seven-year-old Feng is a victim of China’s one-child policy, which restricts the number of children people can have in an effort to control country’s growing population, which is now up to 1.3 billion.
She already has a 5-year-old daughter and so her second pregnancy was considered illegal. The Chinese Communist Party enforce the one-child-per-couple law through birth control, heavy fines and the threat of violence.
But in Feng’s case, that threat became reality.
Last week she had her head covered, her legs beaten and was dragged to a vehicle. She told local media that she was taken to hospital where she was given injections to stop the fetus growing and force her into labour.
Feng and her husband, Deng Ji Yuan could not afford the $6,300 fine for a second child because Deng’s mother “needed money for cancer treatment” and so forced abortion was their only option.
As if that wasn’t horrifying enough, it was also a crime. Chinese law prohibits abortions beyond six months. So even though Feng’s pregnancy was ‘illegal’, what the authorities did to her was also against the law.
Feng’s sister took this photo (and another more graphic image which we have chosen not to publish but you can view it here if you wish to absorb the full horror of Feng’s situation), which has now gone viral around the world.
The Washington Post reports that while previously Feng’s forced abortion would have received little public recognition, the limited access Chinese nationals have to social media has now finally allowed women like Feng to tell their stories.
As of Thursday (June 14), comments on Feng’s abortion neared 1 million on the Twitter-like microblog site Sina Weibo.
The government’s first reaction to the outcry over Feng was that the abortion was merely routine law enforcement. A statement posted Monday on the government website of Zhenping County in Shaanxi province stated that officials, “according to the law, carried out the termination of the out-of-policy second pregnancy of Feng Jianmei” on June 2.
As the fury grew, a preliminary investigation was conducted, after which the government admitted Thursday that it was wrong. The late-term abortion was a “serious violation” of national policies, “damaged the image of family planning work and caused extremely harmful social impact,” said a statement by the Shaanxi Population and Family Planning Commission.
The United States have reaffirmed their opposition to the one-child policy just recently, after activists reported that a five-month pregnant woman was facing a forced abortion.
The case is a tragic one for Feng and her family but it also raises broader issues around the tightly controlled media in China. While access to mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is banned and the internet and wider media tightly controlled by the government, alternative social media outlets are increasingly popping up so that the Chinese can tell their stories to the world.
Our heartfelt sympathy to Feng and her family….
Top Comments
We are told everyday to protect our "choice" & to fight to keep politics off our bodies! How can we demand this within our borders but sit here & condone policies that are destroying our bodies & rights in other countries? How can we not call this hypocrisy at its worst!
We are all women! It doesn't matter if we live in Australia or China WE ARE ALL WOMEN! If we condone this than are we not indirectly allowing our government to consider or implement policy that impacts our bodies in such a way? It's not like we can say "well we will allow this to happen in China because of the number of people in a country but we wont allow anything remotely similar to happen here" or can we?
This could be our daughters in a generation! This could well be a photo of your daughter & granddaughter in 10 or 15 years time!
Go & read the stories of Chinese mothers, I can strongly suggest Letters from a Chinese mother.
I'm horrified by this story but I am more horrified that Australian women can sit here & say this is okay because it is policy!
Since when do we sit back & allow such unfair & horrid policy to be inflicted upon our bodies? ... Ohhhh wait I'm in Australia & she is in China
How do you feel about the fact that in China women use their ability to chose to undergo sex-selective abortions? The sex that they are aborting is female...
No - I completely disagree with the tone of this article. Was it a terrible thing to happen? Yes.
But this couple CHOSE to get pregnant again. China's population is out of control, and this policy is trying to counteract the huge problem they are facing.
People need to realise we live in a world of finite resources and having more children is not the answer.
A terrible outcome, but one brought on completely by the couple in question.
If you read the article, then you should have seen the point where it says that such action is ILLEGAL even in China (to abort a pregnancy after 6 months) therefore, because it took place it is awful!!! As a student of Chinese history and policy, the chain of comand in china is incredibly corrupt, local officials often do as they please and because of this such cases happen which is just dispicable (especially since if they had more money they would have been able to keep the baby). Yes the world is over populated but that is not the burden that only a few nations have to carry and such policies do not always help. It is because of such policies that gender inequality is so high and causes its own MASSIVE issues.
Sometimes I wonder where the empathy and compassion in the world has gone :( You never know what you would do in such a situation and circumstances!
Yep. They completely deserved it. So do all those women out there whose husbands beat them - because they married them. And children who are beaten for having messy rooms, spilt food and tears? Totally their fault.
Having more children is not the answer - for some, like those who make thoughtless comments like these.
How do you know they chose it? Sometimes it happens. My best friend was on two types of birth control and still got pregnant. I recently read about a man who had a vasectomy a few years earlier, but still managed to impregnate his wife. She was not pleased. However inconveniently, accidents do happen.