China is still forcing women to have abortions, despite a supposed shift away from outright statist controls of family size. The Independent reports:

Several health workers have been arrested in Shandong Province in the east of China after the authorities admitted that local officials had been forcing women to have abortions or undergo sterilisations.

Sources in Linyi City and its surrounding counties claimed that up to 120,000 women had been coerced into submitting to the procedures and that some of them were in the ninth month of their pregnancies.

The arrests follow the detention on 6 September of a local activist, Chen Guangcheng. Mr. Chen had claimed that women with two children were being forced to undergo sterilisations, while women pregnant with their third child were required to have abortions.

Sounds like a "choice" issue to me. The choice being to procreate further, as opposed to abort. You wonder where the Western feminist Mafia on this "right to choose?" Head in sand, that's where.

Forced abortions and compulsory sterilisations were commonplace in the early 1980s in China, which with 1.3 billion people is the world's most populous nation. But since the mid-1990s, the government has supposedly switched to a system of fines for couples who have more than one child, while offering annual pensions of about £85 to couples over 60 who have adhered to the one-child policy.

Beijing insists local officials are not authorised to compel people to undergo abortions or sterilisations. Mr Yu said NPFPC officials have travelled to the region to "correct any infringements of citizens rights".

Mr. Chen's campaign is the latest example of how ordinary Chinese are becoming increasingly vocal about government abuses and are eager to take advantage of what legal rights are on offer to them. In response, the authorities have adopted a policy of blaming local officials. But all local government workers have to meet performance targets laid down by Beijing.

Give the screamingly-liberal Independent some props for covering this story. It's just the kind of stuff the U.S. MSM likes to ignore. Liberalization can't come soon enough in China. I don't favor punitive economic sanctions, but rather, a shaming of Beijing in the court of world public opinion by international political and human rights leaders. Revisit this issue in the U.N., for example. Beijing responds to challenged honor. Not always gracefully, but that's how to reach these sick control freaks.

TECHNORATI TAGS: CHINA, FORCED ABORTIONS

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 22, 2005 10:36 AM