China - Forced abortion confirmed

This is quite sad, and hard to comprehend. A woman was forced to abort her 7 month old fetus for failing to comply with the 'one child rule'.

As expected, many Chinese citizens are angered.

A familiar name has been swatted by the heavy hand of the Chinese government.

It's understandable that the Chinese government would move to curb an ever expanding population, but when the numbers of abortions reach such numbers as a result of policy, you almost have to wonder if it'd not be better to allow nature to regulate itself in this regard.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/china-probes-forced-abortion-case-amid-uproar-070412976.html

 

Its never generally good to force people to do anything, but in a place like China where resources are not abundant, something like forced abortions may be necessary - I mean, letting a child die of starvation is immeasurably worse than killing it at birth. That being said I dont know what the exact nature of the Chinese situation is, so I dont feel I have enough knowledge to make a judgment here. It really depends on the whole situation. Morally speaking its always better to let people pursue their interests - but not when this has adverse consequences.

 

the government shoudl never be allowed to decide this private issue for a women

 

I think it should if it means kids dont starve. As harsh as it sounds, if that's the reality, its just stupid not to.

 

no the force abortion dramatically reduce after 2000, its very rare now for offcial to do force abortion, thats why it get alot attention when it happen.

 

The Chinese government are acting responsibly. I know for American's the concept of any kind of government intervention into the public realm is regarded as an attack on freedom. However, freedom, as most people outside of the US are able to comprehend, is not unconditional.

 

The policy if I am not mistaken is urban area you are allowed to have 1 child, rural 2. If more children are had a fine is supposed to be paid, not an automatic forced abortion. The family in this instance could not or would not pay the fine. I find what happen appalling and can see this as one of the glaring errors in the application of this policy, mainly poor families are the ones that suffer and are forced to make harsh and terrible family choices because they cannot pay the fine. My questions are what is health care access like for poor people in China? Is there access to free contraceptives? Are there any safety nets or programs to help people like the couple in this situation, who were unable to pay the fine? What exactly is the written protocol for local authorities to deal with such situations?

 

It's a shocking crime. I believe that the ' officials ' responsible for it have been fired. Not enough, but a reasonable start.

 

It is a tough situation.

To further illustrate this, the one child policy is going to have major, unintended negative consequences of its own. As China's population ages, there will be less young people to sustain them and the nation's social safety nets, and one has to imagine that the tendency to abort females in favor of males is also going to have negative consequences, as well.

 

And if America did something like this, you'd be the first to condemn it. I see how these double standards work.

 

Indeed, its a sad state of affairs. Poverty is a terrible condition for any society. Whoever said China was a threat to the world, or a new leader of it, was a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing idiot.

 

Although they may have double standards, its not necessarily a double standard to protest it here and condone it in a place like China. Its not the force of choice itself that is wrong or right, it is the conditions in which it is applied and utilized. I think we can all agree that individual choice for individual matters is a must, but having a child is not really just an individual matter since a child, once born, has an entitlement to the services of society where it requires them. Thus, the condition of services is dependence on the state of the collective generally. Where the collective is incapable of ensuring or providing such services, it becomes a necessary requirement to act so as to mitigate the negative outcomes that might occur as a result.

 

A Chinese mother was held down while a lethal injection was given to her seven-month-old foetus, after she failed to fill in an application form to have a second child.
A photograph showing 23-year-old Feng Jianmei lying on a hospital bed, with the corpse of her unborn daughter on a plastic sheet beside her, has spread virally through the internet and forced the Chinese government to admit an illegal infanticide.
The photograph, taken by her cousin, A San, was posted on the internet on June 11, a week after local Communist party cadres in Ankang, Shaai province, forcibly aborted Mrs Feng's child.
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Mrs Feng and her 29-year-old husband, Deng Jiayuan, already have a child, a six-year-old girl. But, as farmers, they were entitled by Chinese law to have a second baby with the permission of their local family planning bureau.
http://m.smh.com.au/world/a-forced-...who-failed-to-sign-a-form-20120615-20eu6.html

Two things stand out... She was entitled to have the second child and that the forced abortion was an illegal action to meet quotas which wouldn't have even been threatened if the paperwork had been done properly...
Tragic yes, and yes someone or more than one person should face prosecution over this...

 

Only 30% of Chinese are subject to one child policy... All ethnic minorities, and in this case farmers, have exemptions, as well as all children born with no brothers or sisters...
In the instance of breaches of the one child policy in major cities the penalty is usually a payment of extra taxes to cover the cost of the child's education and healthcare... In this case the actions of local authorities weren't just morally questionable, they were as a result of a paperwork error and failure of local bureaucracy, and also were illegal...
As for the question raised of female infanticide, this is an old cultural practice of some parts of Asia, more widely practiced in India than in China where it is highly illegal...
Practitioners of female infanticide were publicly shamed and condemned by Jian Qing and her followers during the Cultural Revolution...

 

Thanks for the info. Also, I'm not opposed to infanticide per say, - its actually been common throughout the world, but anyway that's a little off optic.

 

China is number one economic power.

 

absolutely ghoulish. Go live in china then those of you who have no problem with it.

 

Define "number one". A country with that much poverty is far from it, in my opinion.

 

Why should they do that?

 

It was in the news just the other day. Didn't you see it.

AND today Joe Biden said that Cities in China beat anything American.

 

The article I posted came from yesterday's newspaper and I included the details you conveniently left out, including the fact that the forced abortion was illegal under Chinese law...
What you have is a story of a single incident which of course should not have happened, and you are trying to generalise it as if it's the life experience of every Chinese woman...
If that was the case do you think Chinese netizens would be outraged about it, "comparing it to crimes of Japanese war criminals and the nazis"..?

 

That's a rather sociopathic definition of responsible then, isn't it? It's like putting more prisoners to death for lesser crimes in order to solve the problem of prison overcrowding.

 

Well no. Whilst its been pointed out the actions in this case were not justifiable, it is entirely justifiable to consider and discuss the necessity that might arise in curbing birth rates in conditions that do not allow for a quality of life for those who are born.

 

Could the same argument not be made for killing the living who are deemed as predisposed (or some other reasoning) to effecting life quality of the living? Say those who are violent and abusive of welfare.

And earlier, you said you weren't opposed to infanticide per se. What do you mean by that? Do you support post birth abortions?

 

That's an entirely different situation. Here, a fetus or infant has no interest, so really we need only consider the interest of the mother and the state. Since the mother cant provide for the children (assuming we are discussing this in the conditions I described before) then we must chiefly consider the capacities of the government in dealing with her interest and those of everyone else which require resources.

An argument can be made for anything in any situation. It depends on both of course. If you want to discuss hypothetical, I dont mind, but I need more info.

Yes, provided it is in the mother's interests. Of course, infanticide does throw open the inclusion of the interests of others that abortion otherwise wouldn't because a fetus is not external to the physical person of the mother. I'm opposed to infanticide on the grounds that it poses to much of a risk to killing an infant that is self aware. So, there are a lot of externalities to consider, hence I said per se.