There is more that separates the U.S. and China than the 6,940 miles between us. As President Obama prepares to visit the country for the first time next week, a Congressional hearing laid out the vast differences between the two nation’s abortion policies.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held a hearing this week on the practices of forced abortions in China.
Chinese women suffer under a cruel one-child policy that requires women to apply for a birth permit. As Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) noted during the hearing, families are fined thousands upon thousands of dollars for having a child without a permit. That child is denied education, health care, and dignity. And should the government find the woman before her child is born, it will at times rip the unborn child from her womb.
One Chinese woman testified before the commission. Here is part of Wujan’s story:
I was drug out of the van. I saw hundreds of pregnant Moms there – all of them, just like pigs in the slaughter house. Then I was put into a room with several other Moms. The room was full of Moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some Moms were crying, some Moms were mourning, some Moms were screaming, and one Mom was rolling on the floor with unbearable pain…
I could hear the sound of the scissors cutting the body of my baby in my womb…The surgery was finished and one nurse showed me part of a bloody foot with her tweezers. Through my tears, the picture of the bloody foot was engraved into my eyes and into my heart, and so clearly I could see the five small bloody toes. Immediately the baby was thrown into a trash can.
As the president travels to a country that encourages such practices behind closed doors, he must stand up for the rights of women and children. As Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post notes, “Forced abortion is not a choice. Averting our gaze from China’s horrific abuse of women is.”
