I’ve been having internet and computer troubles all week, so I’m late to this particular party.
NARAL “Pro-Choice” America is holding a blog day today, in case you missed the few dozen participants (sort of like their *massive* presence every year protesting the March for Life. All six of them. Every year. Watching a river of hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers go by.). In response, Jill Stanek and other pro-lifers are holding a “Ask them what they mean by ‘Choice’ ” blog day.
I’m sure plenty of other people linked at her blog have covered the usual arguments. The “choice” is murder. The baby obviously is not part of the mother’s body, so drop the tired “My body, my choice” schtick. Killing the problem and throwing “it” in the trash doesn’t solve the bad relationship/abuse/rape/etc. On this 38th grisly anniversary of Roe v. Wade, how could you ignore the statistics about the damage abortion has done in our country? I could cover those again.
But no, I’m going to talk about President Hu’s visit to Washington, DC.
For the first time since 1997, Hu received a state dinner and all the bells and whistles we usually reserve for countries we like. Meanwhile, the head of his country’s “family planning” office recently shrugged off the thirtieth anniversary of the One Child Policy by saying that it would be continued for decades to come.
Yes, the blog day, the state dinner, and the One Child policy are all linked.
You see, the reason President Bush had a quiet, no-cameras-allowed lunch with President Hu instead of a big state dinner was because of China’s massive human rights abuses. EWTN’s World Over had lao gai survivor Harry Wu on. He has made it his life’s work (after more than three decades in the lao gai system) to expose the massive prison system. Russia’s gulags never came near what the Chinese communists have acheived. He estimated there are more than 300 million prisoners in the system.
And then there’s the One Child Policy. In commenting on Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (it’s about strict, traditional Chinese parenting and has raised quite a fuss (and several death threats for the author)), one writer on TownHall (I forget which) got lectured by her son about the incredible suicide rate among Chinese women between 18 and 24. The writer and her son took it as a sign of excessive pressure to succeed from over-focused parents. More likely, the root cause is the One Child Policy.
Under the One Child Policy, a Chinese woman is not allowed to carry a pregnancy to term without having had the government’s permission to conceive. Nobody is given permission before marriage, and second children are mostly forbidden (they are occassionally allowed, either in the countryside or in ethnic minorities, usually as a second chance at getting a boy). Any woman found to be pregnant without permission is taken in for an abortion. Women who go into hiding may have their parents arrested and threatened with starvation if she doesn’t get the abortion. Women who hide their pregnancies have been dragged from their homes or fields at nearly full-term for brutal forced abortions. Even those who make it to labor aren’t safe; often, their child is killed anyways, and they return home to find their house bulldozed, their farm confiscated, or crippling fines levied on the family for violating the Policy.
Knowing the consequences of violating the policy, many couples choose to abort girls, knowing they likely will not be allowed a second chance to get a son. Some of those who did not have access to pre-natal gender screenings will abandon their girls, who, if they’re lucky, make it into orphanages. The unlucky ones are killed at birth or wind up as shadow children, reported as having died at birth, and so having no legal status (which means no schooling, no rights, and no help from police if they’re kidnapped into the sex trade, which is booming in China). As a result, there are 37 million more men than women among the children born under the One Child Policy, when nature would have caused only a slight predominance of men.
The vast majority of those missing women are dead.
Furthermore, we have to remember that the 37 million only tells us the imbalance, the girls aborted or killed at birth for being girls. It doesn’t cover any of the coerced abortions the Chinese government orders every day, boy or girl.
And so, China has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, in a country that traditionally had strong taboos against it (given Japan’s culture, for example, a high suicide rate is still very sad, but less surprising). Even more odd, China’s suicides are predominantly women. How many of that 18-to-24 suicide statistic is not because of the pressure of parental expectations, but because of the brutality of governmental policies?
Today, President Hu was honored with a lavish state dinner of stereotypically American fare, peopled with the beautiful people from China who have succeeded in this country: Vera Wang, Yo Yo Ma, Jackie Chan, and others. And why not? Except for the forced abortions (which China continues to deny), President Hu hasn’t really espoused any position on abortion worse than our own President Obama, who voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act and was awarded a perfect pro-abortion score by NARAL.
So, President Obama smiled and proudly announced that he had secured a wonderful new trade agreement with China: the National Zoo will get to extend its lease on the pandas for another five years.
Meanwhile, in China today, another 30,000 abortions took place, many of them forced by the government. More women, unable to bear the memories of the murders of their unborn children, took their own lives.
Tell me, NARAL, is this what you mean by “choice”? Because NARAL was not out there with the human rights protesters in front of the White House.
[stands up and applauds]
Although it is very sad that you have to write about this subject matter you write about it beautifully. Thank you for bringing more awareness to the atrocities that continue to go on in China. My heart breaks for the Chinese living under these deplorable conditions which it now appears are sanctioned by the U.S. May God bless you abundently in your efforts to spread the truth.
38yrs? that’s like as old as me!
Yeah, the year I realized that abortion had been legal since before I was born was a cold shock. You start to wonder how many classmates or friends you never met, because they were aborted.
[…] Musings of a Catholic Mom NowABetterWorld On Pilgrimage OneMom One Voice The Passionate Pro-Lifer The Political Housewyf Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate Pro-Life Action League ProLifeBlogs.com Pro-Life MN blog […]
[…] Pro Life Blog Day and the One Child Policy by The Political Housewyf brings our attention back to the one child policy in China and the atrocities that are carried on by their government every day. Apparently President Obama condones these policies as evident by the lavish state dinner that was thrown in President Hu’s honor. Keep in mind that there have been rumblings on the left to adopt this same policy here in the U.S. […]
[…] Pro Life Blog Day and the One Child Policy by The Political Housewyf brings our attention back to the one child policy in China and the atrocities that are carried on by their government every day. Apparently President Obama condones these policies as evident by the lavish state dinner that was thrown in President Hu’s honor. Keep in mind that there have been rumblings on the left to adopt this same policy here in the U.S. […]