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Case 57-2020: Master Hsing YunCHARGESViolation of Buddhist LawSupreme Offense against International Morality and the Sanctity of LifeLIST OF EVIDENCESEvidence 1: Testimony of Master Hsing YunEvidence 2: Violation of Buddhist EthicsEvidence 3: Violations of International Buddhist Law jurisprudenceEvidence 4: Motive of Hsing Yun violations is silence facing Abortions and Human Rights Violations in ChinaEvidence 5: Forced Abortion and Forced Sterilization in ChinaEvidence 6: Violation of Natural Law and the Rights of the UnbornEvidence 1: Testimony of Master Hsing YunMaster Hsing Yun: “Equality is a truth of human life within the universe, it is an aim of humanity, and it is also the basis of Buddhism. The Avatamsaka Sutra says: “All sentient beings are equal.” The Treatise on the Perfection of Great Wisdom says: “From the very highest level of all Buddhas to the low level of animals, all are equal and there are no differences between them.” The Diamond Sutra says: “All dharmas are equal with no lofty or lowly” (…) Thus, in this world we should not argue about who is greater or who is better. All people equally possess “Buddha nature.” (…) From the Buddhist point of view, all sentient beings have Buddha nature and all people are equal and beyond duality. (…) It is reported that the number of abortions in Taiwan has gone up every year since the Legislative Council passed the “Eugenics Healthcare Law” in 1984. In 2003 there were over 400,000 abortions in Taiwan, which is actually greater than the number of births. Recently, the government began to amend the Eugenics Healthcare Law. One of the most contentious issues is whether the husband of the married woman should have a say in the decision to have an abortion. In fact, issues such as abortion are very complex and cannot be decided simply on the basis of laws, religion, or morality. They touch on questions of life itself, human rights, ethics, religious beliefs, and even the Law of Cause and Effect. Abortion never involves only one person and is never just a simple decision, but involves husbands, wives, relatives, and of course the unborn child as well, so some religions choose to oppose it. But in order to find some way to protect young, unmarried women who become pregnant, some groups have established single-parent families for these unwed mothers. In this regard, we can see yet another way to address a social problem. The Buddhist position on abortion is that the unborn child is also a sentient life and therefore, having an abortion is a form of killing. However, although this may be true in principle, there are occasions when there are few, if any, alternatives to abortion. For example, if a woman is pregnant with a fetus that will surely be severely handicapped, can a third party tell her that she must not have an abortion? After she bears the child, she will spend decades raising it, and will any of those people be around to help or even care about her then? Then there are some women who are raped and become pregnant as a result—if we believe that compassion means that we must oppose all kinds of killing, including abortion, then how are we going to handle the mother’s potential life-long mixed feelings of love and animosity toward her child? Some questions cannot be easily answered from the standpoint of laws or morality alone, as there are just too many complex factors present in nearly every case. Thus, it is best to allow the person who is most impacted by the abortion to have the right to decide what she wants to do, which means the pregnant woman should have the right to make the decision for herself. The woman in question is the person in the best position to weigh the consequences, since her decision will be subject to the Law of Cause and Effect, for which she herself has to account. Fundamentally, women do not get abortions out of hatred or anger, but rather to protect their reputations, their safety, their future, and so on. Thus, even though Confucianism says, “heaven cares for every living being,” the question of abortion is not one that can be solved solely by legislation. Nor can it be answered by interference from those who want to protect traditional values. The person who has the most right to decide the question is the mother of the fetus. It should be up to her to make the decision and everyone else should respect it, because more than anyone else, she must bear all the consequences. (…) There are many reasons why women get abortions. If the pregnancy is the result of rape, many women will decide to get an abortion. In these cases, the rest of society should sympathize with them and help them recover from their ordeal. If an abortion is the result of unmarried teenagers trying to “taste forbidden fruits,” well, this sort of thing should really have been prevented in the first place by the family and society at large through reinforcing their awareness of responsibility, propriety, and sex education. (…) Master Yinguang once said, “The karma produced from sexual desire and killing is the basic reason sentient beings are trapped within the cycle of birth and death. The hardest to eradicate is sexual desire. The easiest to commit is killing.” Again, abortion is still killing. (…) Therefore, the best way to avoid an abortion is not to transgress in our sexual conduct in the first place. (…) If the abortion is chosen under unavoidable circumstances, then the complexities of the karma incurred may be overcome through wholesome behavior, repentance, cultivating virtue, and other merits. Nonetheless, the most important thing is to cultivate good behavior so that something like this can be avoided in the first place. It is always better to prevent the problem than to have to spend time repairing the damage.” Evidence 2: Violation of Buddhist EthicsBhante Subhuti: “What do Theravada Buddhists believe in terms of abortion? (…) The rules of kamma do not change over time, and abortion has been around since the time of the Buddha. My job is not to make decisions or advice for others, but to give a “pure” classical Buddhist explanation on abortion. In brief, the Theravada Buddhist texts (and probably all other schools) believe that an unborn child after conception is a living human being. Aborting it with intention is the same as killing a human living being. How the kamma works out is beyond my imagination. It does however play an important role in the Buddhist Rules which can be used as a bar for knowing if something was done wrong or not. If a monk directly says that abortion is OK or uses code words or even indirect speech with intention to say it is OK for a person to commit an abortion, and a person uses that speech as a reason to abort an unborn child, then it is a Pārājika offense; an offense of defeat and immediate expulsion. The monk is expelled automatically without a trial and may not even know it. The same is also true with topics on euthanasia. A Pārājika rule on killing is also found in the Mahayana, and Tibetan Schools as well. (…) First let us take a quote from the rule book called, The Buddhist Monastic Code I, which is an English authority on the Buddhist Monastic Rules. The translated rule for killing a human is as follows: Should any bhikkhu intentionally deprive a human being of life, or search for an assassin for him, or praise the advantages of death, or incite him to die (saying): “My good man, what use is this evil, miserable life to you? Death would be better for you than life,” or with such an idea in mind, such a purpose in mind, should in various ways praise the advantages of death or incite him to die, he also is defeated and no longer in affiliation. This rule against intentionally causing the death of a human being is best understood in terms of five factors, all of which must be present for there to be the full offense. 1) Object: a human being, which according to the Vibha?ga includes human fetuses as well, counting from the time consciousness first arises in the womb immediately after conception up to the time of death. 2) Intention: knowingly, consciously, deliberately, and purposefully wanting to cause that person’s death. “Knowingly” also includes the factor of — 3) Perception: perceiving the person as a living being. 4) Effort: whatever one does with the purpose of causing that person to die. 5) Result: The life-faculty of the person is cut as the result of one’s act. Object. The Vibha?ga defines a human being as a person “from the time consciousness first becomes manifest in a mother’s womb, up to its death-time.” It follows from this that a bhikkhu who intentionally causes an abortion — by arranging for the operation, supplying the medicines, or giving advice that results in an abortion — incurs a pārājika. A bhikkhu who encourages a woman to use a means of contraception that works after the point of conception would be guilty of a pārājika if she were to follow his advice. As you can see, abortion is used as an example in this book and also the main source in Pā?i. It should be noted that the first consciousness is defined as the rebirth-linking consciousness.? This basically happens at conception.? Some say that if you poke it and it does not move then there is no consciousness.? So does that mean that a person who is in a coma does not have consciousness??(…) There is a phrase in the original rule that is important. “or praise the advantages of death” This opens up the door just about anything, even a nod of the head or a grunt, etc that may praise the benefits of killing, or death. In this case, speaking up in praise of abortion for any case, even to save the life of a mother, is an offense as well. If someone were to listen to a recording of such words or read an article of such words, and then do the abortion, then it would be an offense for a monk all the same as killing himself. Such a topic is sort of taboo for a monk to publicly speak on because there is no way of really knowing if someone had killed an unborn baby based on such words. Just as it is the penalty for monks on killing humans, it can be used as a model for the first precept for lay people on killing living beings. Here is an account in an ancient text called The Path of Purification. 39. When the mother has an abortion, the pain that arises in him through the cutting and rending in the place where the pain arises that is not fit to be seen even by friends and intimates and companions—this is the suffering rooted in abortion.”Phra Mahamanoj: "We Buddhists … firmly disagree with legal abortion and the destruction of life."Phramaha Vudhijaya Vajiramedhi: "In Buddhist view, both having an abortion and performing an abortion amount to murder. Those involved in abortions will face distress in both this life and the next because their sins will follow them."Damien Keown: “Buddhism believes in rebirth and teaches that individual human life begins at conception. The new being, bearing the karmic identity of a recently deceased individual, is therefore as entitled to the same moral respect as an adult human being.”Michael G. Barnhart: “In the book Buddhism and Bioethics?(…)?Keown argues that the preponderance of the Buddhist traditon is overwhelmingly antiabortionist. (…) I find Keown's discussion of the sources that directly relate to the question of abortion fairly convincing.? Especially in the Pitakas, or in Buddhagosa's commentaries, it seems quite clear that the practice of abortion is considered unacceptable. (…) Keown argues that the First Precept and its prohibition against taking life is part of a much larger reverence for life, life being one of Buddhism's three basic goods -- life, wisdom and "friendship" (Keown's spin on karuna and other associated qualities). (…) ?Of course we who are Buddhists will hold to the end that a fetus is "life."? No matter what kind of conditions make abortion necessary we cannot completely justify it.? But to us it is not just fetuses; all forms of life deserve our respect.? We may not turn them into our private possessions.? Animals too.? Even rice and wheat shares in life's sanctity.”Brahma Net Sutra: “A disciple of the Buddha must NOT: Kill by himself; Tell others to kill; Kill with expedient means; Praise killing, or Condone killing. He must NOT use any methods whatsoever, not even mantras, to kill. He must NOT create any: Causes for killing; Methods of killing, and Karma of killing. As long as the being has a life, he must NOT end its life intentionally.”Upasaka Sutra: “If one destroys an embryo inside a woman by making her take poison, one is guilty of 2 sins – the act [of killing] and its associated elements.”: “More than 1,000 Christians and Buddhists chanted “abortion is murder” and other slogans during a protest in which they prayed in front of the presidential office in Taipei yesterday.? The 'Stand for Life' campaigners also delivered a petition, demanding an amendment to a provision in the Generic Health Act which they claim has led to an increase in abortions in Taiwan.? The controversial provision stipulates that it is lawful for a pregnant woman to ask for abortion if the pregnancy or childbirth affects her mental health or family life. ” Abhinav Anand & Assoc. Prof. Ajit Kumar Behura: “Intentionally ending the life or development of a foetus is called: abortion. (…) Buddhist tradition rejects the practice of abortion; it believes abortion is the deliberate destruction of an innocent human life. (…) An estimate shows about three hundred forty thousand (340,000) abortions are being done each year, although one parliamentarian suggested that there may be as many as 1.5 million abortions performed each year in South Korea. (…)Buddhism considers abortion as an intentional killing, its practice is prohibited and a highly punishable offence. Practice of this directly goes against the paramount virtue ‘ahimsa’. (…) Gabbhapatana (gabbha means womb and patana means bringing to fall) is denoted for abortion in Pali language. In the Buddhist literatures, abortion understood as an intentional killing of an embryo or fetus. It rejects the practice of abortion because it believes that abortion is a deliberate destruction of life and practice of this directly goes against the Buddhist principle ahimsa. Ahimsa does not approve killing. It avoids killing of a living being. One should not kill a living being, nor cause it to be killed, nor should he incite another to kill. Do not injure any being, either strong or weak (Suttanipata, II: 14; cited in Sebastian 2005, 228). In Mahakhandhaka of the Mahavagga, instructions are given for monks and nuns “An ordained monk should not intentionally deprive a living thing of life, even if it is only an ant. A monk who deliberately deprives a human being of life, even to the extent of causing an abortion, he becomes no longer a follower of the Buddha. As a flat stone, broken apart is something which cannot be put back together again, so a monk who has deliberately deprived a human being of life is no longer a follower of the Buddha. This is something not to be done by you as long as life lasts…”, (VinayaPitaka I: 97; cited in Keown 1995, 93). The elimination from the Sangha was cited a punishment for the monks and the nuns for advocating abortion. (…) The Buddhist tradition says human life begins when the fertilized egg is conceived in the mother’s womb, i.e., human life starts at conception. (…) The Mahatanhasankhaya-sutta says the process of fetal development and the cause and conditions are (i) intercourse must take place (union of sperm and egg) (ii) the mother’s fertile period and (iii) arrival of consciousness (gandhabba). “Human being means: from the mind’s first arising, from the time of consciousness becoming first manifest in a mother’s womb until the time of death, here meanwhile he/she is called a human being.” (Vinaya Pitaka, III, 73; cited in Damian 2010, 131). Hence Buddhism regards embryo as a human person from the very moment of conception, therefore abortion is considered as the termination of innocent human life. (…) Buddhism advocates a pro-life position on abortion. It argues that practice of abortion cannot be morally justified, because: it is a wrong deed. Life starts at the moment of conception and therefore destroying an early life is equal to destroying the life of a mature an individual being. Pro-life acknowledges that, destroying an early human life is morally wrong. Buddhism opposes the practice of abortion on the basis of moral conduct ‘ahimsa’. The word ahimsa means non-killing or not-destroying life. (…) Buddhist tradition argues that human fetus is an innocent and therefore it is wrong to kill a fetus. It is the central argument of pro-life position of abortion. Therefore, practice of abortion is an intolerable act. (…) Abortion is tantamount to killing which is against the teaching of Buddha in the very first precept. (…) In Buddhist canonical works it is cited that an individual life starts at the very first moment of conception, where human body gradually develops along with consciousness; therefore, one is not entitled to take unborn human life.”Peter Harvey: “The monastic code recognizes human life as starting at conception (…) Given the Buddhist view of embryonic life, it is not surprising that causing an abortion is seen as a serious act: When a monk is ordained he should not intentionally deprive a living being of life, (…) The penalty for a monk intentionally causing an abortion is permanent expulsion from the Sangha: Whatever monk should intentionally deprive a human being of life ...he is also one who is defeated [in the monastic life], he is not in communion . . . Human being means: from the mind’s ?rst arising, from (the time of) consciousness becoming ?rst manifest in a mother’s womb until the time of death, here meanwhile he is called a human being.(…) Such passages from the Theravadin Vinaya have their counterpart in the Sarvastivadin Vinaya used in Tibet, which clearly forbids monks’ and nuns’ involvement in abortion (…). While these passages pertain to monks and nuns, rather than lay people, the rules which entail expulsion if broken cover serious matters, and it is clear that, here, causing an abortion is seen as a case of murdering a human, a serious breach of the ?rst of the ?ve precepts applying to all lay Buddhists. David Stott, speaking on behalf of the Tibetan tradition, argues strongly that abortion is wrong, going against both Sravakayana ethics and the Mahayana emphasis on compassionate cherishing of all beings. He thus holds that it is bad to have an abortion, perform one, or advise someone to have one (…). As with all aspects of Buddhist ethics, intention is a key factor. This can be seen at Vin. III. 83-4, on a series of cases where a woman asks a monk for an abortive preparation, either for herself or a rival co-wife. (…) A key reason why Buddhist principles treat abortion as such a serious matter is that human life, with all its potential for moral and spiritual development, is seen as a rare and precious opportunity in a being’s wandering in the round of rebirths (…).For a being to gain a foothold in a human womb and then be killed is to have this rare opportunity destroyed. (…), the karmic result is the same whether the foetus is two or three months old, and McDermott sees this as evidence that the age of an aborted foetus is not seen by Buddhism as a?ecting the seriousness of the act (…). Keown also holds that causing the death of a foetus is as grave an o?ence as killing an adult (…), and Stott holds that a foetus is: not a ‘partially souled’ being nor a ‘potential’ being but an embodied sentient being, however small. It would thus be di?cult for any Western Buddhist to make the claim that the smaller the foetus, the less serious the abortion. (…) What of cases of pregnancy posing a ?nancial burden on the mother and any existing children? Would it be justi?ed to kill a baby to reduce the economic strain on a family? No. (…) So abortion on socio-economic grounds is not justi?ed. Stott argues that it is not ‘compassionate’ to have an abortion carried out on such grounds, asking how it is morally permissible to kill another being because one is unhappy or poor. (…)What of the woman’s ‘right to choose’an abortion,based on the idea that she has a right to do what she wants with her ‘own’ body? Buddhism,with its emphasis that there is no Self which can be found as ‘owner’ of mental and physical processes, would dispute this: (…) That is, a foetus is not just ‘a part’ of a pregnant woman, but another living being, ‘temporarily housed in the body of another’, as Keown puts it (…), whose life must be properly considered, not just swept aside by a ‘right to choose’. To do that could be to act from all three of greed, hatred and delusion, the three roots of unwholesome action: Greed, that is passionate attachment, would lie behind a person’s considering only their own interests or pleasures in the situation. It would also solidify the notion that an ‘I’ owned the foetus and could do with it what ‘I’ would. Hatred would motivate one to strike out to eliminate the perceived cause of discomfort, the foetus. Delusion might cloud one’s understanding and lead to denial that the foetus is a living being. (…)As regards using abortion as a means of reducing a country’s overpopulation, this seems a drastic measure when compared to using contraception. In Communist China, the ‘one child policy’ means that women are sometimes given abortions against their will. This combines murder of the foetus with assault on the mother, and is surely a barbaric practice. (…) Tibetan Buddhism has preserved the Indian Buddhist view that abortion is the taking of a human life and is thus wrong. Philip Denwood says on it: nowadays all peoples from Tibetan-speaking areas regard it with horror as the killing of a living being which has done no wrong. (…) David Stott reports that, from anecdotal evidence from lay people and religious authorities among Tibetan refugees in Nepal and India, abortion is not practised ‘to any extent’ in the community, despite its being legal in India (…). Stott also a?rms that, without exception, the various Tibetan authorities he asked held that abortion was ‘unvirtuous’ or ‘expressly forbidden’ (…). In 1978 Lama Lodo, when in San Francisco, said the following to someone who reported that a friend was considering an abortion: The best thing for you to do would be to try to talk her out of the abortion because it is an act of profound negative consequences to kill a human being. A human being’s body is so precious that it would be better if you talk her into having the baby and then putting it up for adoption. (…) It is clear,at the very least, that the great majority of Buddhists agree that abortion is killing a human being, and is an evil that should be avoided, other things being equal.” Constantin-Iulian Damian: “As for Buddhism, the traditional embryology and the principle of non-violence, seen by Buddhists as a way of life, determine a similar attitude concerning abortion. More than that, if a Buddhist monk even incites to abortion he is “defeated” and scourged with total exclusion from the monastic order, the severest punishment a monk can experience. Despite all these, in India, Thailand or Japan the rate of abortions is very high, a situation caused mainly by the progressive secularization of these societies, since more and more Hindus and Buddhists are excluding the religious and moral precepts from their lives. (…) The Buddhist View on Abortion (…) If Buddhism did not yet assess an official opinion concerning issues as assisted suicide, organs transplant, stem cells research etc., it pronounces very clear towards abortion, considering the deliberate termination of a pregnancy a homicide. Therefore, Buddhism strongly disagrees with and, with few exceptions, morally condemns abortion. Such an attitude has a triple ground: first, the Buddhist doctrine about the identity and constitution of the human being, karma, rebirth and, the most important one, the moment when the human person begins to exist; second, the Buddhist ethics, especially the first precept of the moral conduct, ahi?sā, a compulsory moral commandment both for monks and for laymen; third, there are the monastic rules that clearly forbid abortion. (…) At the fundamental question: “When does life begin?”, Buddhism answers very clearly: at the right moment of conception. (…)According to this Buddhist perception of the embryo as a human being in nuce, abortion is clearly considered a homicide and an infringement of the first Buddhist precept of moral conduct: the nonviolence (ahi?sā). (…)The essence of the Buddhist ethics is synthesized in the first five moral precepts (pa?casīla) compulsory for all Buddhists, laypersons and monks: to abstain from taking life (killing), from taking what is not given (stealing), from sexual misconduct, from false speech (lying) and from drinks that cause heedlessness. The first of these precepts is the most important one and it refers to the interdiction of killing not only human beings but also animals, regardless their size. (…) Considering the embryo a fully human being, Buddhism considers abortion an infringement of this essential moral precept. (…) Consequently, abortion, which is the killing of a human being, represents the grievous sin a Buddhist could commit and for this reason it implies a terrible moral burden, which affects not only the present life of the foetus and of the responsible ones but also the next rebirths. Taking into account that every act or intention from the present life influences both this and the future lives identities and circumstances, the mother, the abortionist, and the person that should be born estrange themselves from enlightenment and sink more deeply into the suffering chain of reincarnations (Tsomo, 2006; Keown, 2005; Florida, 1991). (…) The first explicit forbiddance of abortion is in Vinaya Pitaka, a conduct code for monks and nuns. This text strictly prohibits monks’ (bikkhu) and nuns’ (bikkhumi) involvement in practicing abortion and stipulates punishments for those who would infringe this rule (…) Taking into account that the same text speaks about the moment when the life of a human being starts and when it ends (see III, 73 supra), the interdiction of killing or inciting to kill can be interpreted as encompassing the interdiction to abort, practice abortion, or instigate to abortion. (…) According to the text we have mentioned, the monk who practices or incites to abortion is “defeated”. This is the most severe punishment a Buddhist monk could get and consists in his banishment from the monastic community (sangha) for good.” Evidence 3: Violations of International Buddhist Law jurisprudenceBuddhist Tribunal on Human Rights: “Legal Opinion on Abortion. Case n° 20/2016: United Nations (UN) & Secretary General Ban Ki-moon & Secretary General Antonio Guterres. July 13, 2018. (…) in the face of the continuing show of support from the United Nations (UN) toward abortion, which is a perverse and criminal practice that violates the fundamental human right to life protected by the International Law treaties, (…) the American Convention on Human Rights, which says that a person is every human being and that he or she must be legally protected from the moment of conception and should not be assassinated arbitrarily, (…). The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights confirms that the promotion of abortion carried out by the UN violates international treaties such as the American Convention on Human Rights, which makes it clear that every human being is a person with the right to life from the conception and with the right to be legally protected. In addition, the UN‘s support for abortion violates other international standards that strictly protect the human right to life, such as Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 1 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights denounces that the promotion of abortion carried out by the UN violates international treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which in its Article 6 not only protects the inherent right to life of every human being, but even totally prohibits the death penalty on children under 18 as well as on pregnant women, thus demonstrating that the unborn child is an innocent person and a subject of rights that cannot be stripped of his or her life by arbitrary means, because the right to life is independent of the life of the mother. (…) In this sense, the Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights agrees with the United States and other countries in affirming that the UN Human Rights Committee does not have the authority to include the right to abortion within the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which clearly protects human life. The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights denounces that the promotion of abortion carried out by the UN violates international treaties such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which in its article 12 does not only oblige states to recognize the human right to physical and mental health, but also ensures that this right is effective through the healthy development of children and the reduction of infant mortality. The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights supports the decision of the United States government to block economic funds to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) during the years 2017 and 2018. This decision would have been taken due to the participation of this UN agency to collaborate with family planning or population control of China, despite the fact that one of the main techniques of this regime is forced abortion, which violates the Kemp-Kasten Amendment of the United States. As evidence of the participation of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in the 350 million forced abortions carried out by China’s family planning program, there is not only the testimony of Stephen Mosher of the Population Research Institute, who claims that UNFPA looked the other way in the face of forced abortions and forced sterilization (…). For this reason, Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, considered that the silence of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in the face of hundreds of millions of murders of babies in China is an act of complicity. Obviously, by promoting abortion, the United Nations Organization (UN) has violated the Convention on the Rights of the Child, since, as Argentine law 23.849 shows, the child must be interpreted as every human being from the time of his/her conception until 18 years. In effect, the Convention on the Rights of the Child determines that all children have the inherent right to life, so that States must ensure the survival and development of the child, understanding the child as every human being under 18 years old. By not mentioning that the child exists from birth, the Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly shows that the existence of the child occurs from the beginning of human life, which is subject of rights or holder of special aid and juridical protection. In fact, so that there is no doubt about it, the Declaration on the Rights of the Child and also the Convention on the Rights of the Child recognize in their Preamble that the child needs special protection and care due to his lack of physical and mental maturity, and must receive legal protection both before and after birth. The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights denounces that the promotion of abortion carried out by the UN violates international treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which does not create the existence of the right to abortion, but even prohibits it through Article 12, in which is confirmed that States must guarantee women the access to appropriate and free medical care services during pregnancy, delivery and post-partum, ensuring adequate nutrition in pregnancy and breastfeeding. The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights considers that the United Nations (UN) manipulates and violates International Law through the dissemination of a fictitious right to abortion that neither exists nor is inferred in any kind of international standard, whose binding treaties actually support the right to life of unborn children, especially the American Convention on Human Rights and its defense of human life from conception. (…) By ignoring the right to life, which is intrinsic to every human being, the United Nations (UN) has positioned itself on a Path opposed to peace, justice, education and health, abandoning the path of righteousness by being complicit in the worst cases of violations of international human rights law, as is the case of the hundreds of millions of forced abortions that are crimes against humanity and have gone unpunished thanks to the UN support. After having ruled the Responsibility for committing a Supreme Offense against International Morality and the Sanctity of Life carried out by the United Nations (UN) under the leadership of Secretaries General Ban Ki-moon & Antonio Guterres (…). Obviously, abortion constitutes an act of total abandonment toward the child, thus violating the supreme constitutional norm. In this way, the Argentine National Constitution defends the Sanctity of life, which is the intrinsic dignity or Buddhic nature of every human being, so that instead of resorting to the legalization of abortion, the Constitution would point in the direction of a public assistance regime that simultaneously protects the life of the child and the mother, something that is currently evidenced by the fact that pregnant women receive the universal subsidy for children. The Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights agrees with the Path tending to the protection of life through education, prevention, containment and accompaniment of those pregnant women who do not want to give birth, since they can perfectly place the child for adoption with no need to condemn him or her to death. Therefore, the legalization of abortion is unconstitutional and an attack against the sanctity or intrinsic dignity of life, violating the right to life that the unborn child owns since conception, (…)The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights agrees with the Argentina National Association of Medicine, recalling that the basic scientific principles and the practical medical precepts binding all professionals oblige to care for, protect and save the life of the mother and the unborn child, following a Hippocratic ethic that inalienablely defends the human life from its conception. In effect, the existence of clandestine abortions constitutes a sanitary issue that the State must prevent and cure without resorting to the legalization of the murder of the unborn child, which would violate the fundamental right to life. The Buddhist Tribunal also agrees with the Argentina National Association of Medicine that the unborn child is biologically and scientifically a human being from the moment of conception, being also a subject of law according to the Argentine National Constitution, the international human rights treaties and the internal legal codes of the country. However, this Violation of Constitutional Law by the United Nations (UN) through the promotion of abortion is not only an attack against the Argentine Constitution, but it is also a violation against the Constitutional Courts of Chile and Peru, which have recognized that international treaties protect the right to life of the unborn child. Indeed, the Constitutional Court of Chile recalled in 2008 that the Chilean Constitution states in its Article 19 that all people have the right to life and to physical and mental integrity, legally protecting the life of the unborn child or embryo, concluding then that a norm on regulation of fertility that attempts against the right to life by means of the morning-after pill, which aborts the fertilized ovum, would be unconstitutional. Accordingly, the Constitutional Court of Peru ruled on October 26 2009 that, based on international regulations, the State should be ordered to refrain from providing such instruments as public policy. (…) In short, as highlighted by Judge Adrian Burke, the right to life is based on Natural Law and should not be a right granted by the State, since the fact that a State grants a right to life would be dangerous because the one who grant a right also able to decide to remove it. (…)The Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights agrees with Pope Benedict XVI that at the root of pro-abortion legislation is selfishness and the doubt about the value and beauty of life, which is why the Buddhist Tribunal supports the Catholic struggle in order to defend the gift of life, which cannot be the object of a plebiscite. (…) The Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights agrees with the Canon Law in penalizing abortion despite any kind of motive that has led the mother to make the immoral decision to kill the life of the unborn child. (…) Canon 1398 of the Canon Law Code of 1983 defines that whoever procures the crime of abortion incurs latae sententiae excommunication. This excommunication encompasses both the woman who chooses infanticide, and also includes the abortionist doctor and his or her assistant nurses. As Pope John Paul II stated in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, this excommunication also includes anyone who is an accomplice without whose cooperation the crime would not have occurred, as is the case of relatives who provide money or give their consent to perform an abortion. However, as recalled by Cardinal Rivera of the Archdiocese of Mexico, this character of necessary accomplice to the crime of abortion also includes the legislators who supported the legalization of abortion, incurring latae sententiae excommunication. As the Canon Law Code defines that those who procures the crime of abortion incurs latae sententiae excommunication, and the act of procuring is defined as making procedures or efforts to make what was expressed happens, undoubtedly the politicians procuring the creation and approval of an abortion law are the main responsible for all abortions that are executed from that immoral law. These politicians complicit in the crime of abortion would not only be the parliamentarians who voted for the law, but also would be the ministers who supported it and the very President of the country who does not veto such legislation, all of whom would have incurred latae sententiae excommunication according to the Canon Law. (…) The Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights then shares with many bishops of the Catholic Church the function of informing, instructing, warning and admonishing society, being in accordance with Pope John Paul II about the pastoral orientation of the ethical-spiritual judgment against the crime of abortion, since in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae confirms that in the canonical discipline of the Catholic Church the penalty of excommunication against those who practice abortion is to make people fully aware about the seriousness of the immoral act and favoring an appropriate conversion and repentance. Since the Catholic law against abortion is profoundly similar to the rule of Buddhist Law reflected in the Vinaya Code, the Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights revalidates the position of Canon Law against the criminal act of abortion as well as its position of protection of life of the human being from the moment of conception, denouncing that the United Nations (UN) would not be doing nothing more than apology of crime through promotions of abortionist laws that violate the right to life. In short, as Father Pedro María Reyes Vizcaíno, who is a doctor in Canon Law, has pointed out, the one who denies the doctrine about the right to life remains latae sententiae excommunicated. (…) After having ruled the Responsibility for committing a Violation of Canon Law by the United Nations (UN), then it must be analyzed whether such organization had committed a Violation of International Buddhist Law, which is an officially recognized legal system in some member states of the UN, besides being the ethical-legal system regulating the lives of more than 500 million Buddhists around the world. Beyond the fact that the totality of the Buddhist spiritual traditions share the main ethical precept of committing to follow a path consisting in refraining from killing sentient beings, there are also specific legal codes in each tradition, as is the case of the Bodhisattva Code in which the commitment to avoid any action that causes suffering is assumed, in addition to assuming not to kill but to nurture life. The International Buddhist Ethics Committee & Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights confirms that the Vinaya Code of Theravada tradition has at its core a system of Buddhist Law whose rules are called Patimokkha. Precisely, the first four rules of the Patimokkha are the four Parajika, by means of which a member of the Spiritual Commune (Sangha) is expelled or excommunicated after committing the worst transgressions of Buddhist Law. As is the case with latae sententiae excommunication within the Catholic Canon Law, in this case the Theravada Canon Law considers that the infractions of the four Parajika are so serious that they do not require any ceremony or trial, since the penalty is an automatic expulsion. Within the four Parajika is the prohibition of deliberately killing a human being or encouraging the advantages of death, which obviously includes inciting homicide, suicide and abortion. This important rule that is found in the Vinaya Code of Buddhist Law is aimed at protecting human life, which according to the interpretative Canon called Vibhanga also includes human fetuses as subjects with the right to life from the moment of conception. In addition, the interpretive Vibhanga Canon also defines homicide as ending life or interrupting its continuity, whose clear examples are both its realization and the apologia of homicide, suicide and abortion. In conclusion, in the Theravada Canon Law, like in Catholic Canon Law, killing or inciting the murder of a born person or of an embryo is a Parajika crime, which causes automatic expulsion within the Buddhist Spiritual Community. On this same path of righteousness, in 2017 the United Buddhist Nations Organization organized the Eighth Buddhist Council of history. In this historic event in 2600 years of tradition, the Buddhist Convention on Human Rights was agreed and approved, establishing the following with respect to the right to life: “Article 1 – The Buddhist Communities affirm that every person has the right to life in peace, which will be protected by Buddhist Law at all times. (…) Article 35 – The Buddhist Communities affirm that every person has the right to life, which is why both abortion and the death penalty must be prohibited. (…) Article 51 – The Buddhist Communities affirm that every person has the right that their constitutional guarantees or natural rights are never suspended, especially the right to life, integrity, free conscience, family, nationality and indispensable judicial guarantees.” All this leads to the conclusion that the United Nations (UN) has committed a Violation of International Buddhist Law. (…) Ergo, the Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights dictates that: Abortion is defined as an act of Infanticide, there being no difference between killing the child before birth and killing him after birth, since both are biologically and psychologically premature, so it is a perverse fiction to say that abortion constitutes a right. (…) The courts around the world are required to commit themselves to defend the right to life of all human beings, including the weakest, such as the poor, the elderly and children, declaring unconstitutional any law that violates rights and fundamental freedoms. A call is made to all doctors to maintain fidelity and commitment toward the care of human life, and must valiantly exercise the human right to conscientious objection in order not to be forced to take actions contrary to ethics and Spirituality. (…) The United Nations (UN) is condemned for promoting that the embryo is not a human being with intrinsic dignity or right to life, because this would open a dangerous path for the future by ignoring the human rights of the unborn child and would implicitly allow terrible practices such as the commercial sale of embryos and even the scientific experimentation of human-animal hybrids, all of which might happen after having stripped the embryo or unborn child from humanity and natural rights.”International Buddhist Ethics Committee: “Case 27/2017: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). PRONOUNCEMENT on Violation of the Human Right to Life. June 21, 2018. (…) International Buddhist Ethics Committee dictates that women’s rights are not above the rights of the unborn child, recalling the fact that there is no valid reason to abort as long as there is the right to give the child for adoption, since if the child is the product of rape or if there are possibilities of being born with an illness, the mother is always free to deliver the child to the care of others instead of simply deciding to murder the baby and cut his/her life project. (…) International Buddhist Ethics Committee supports the approach of the argentine economist Javier Milei, who in the name of the liberal tradition spoke out against abortion for violating the main of three principles that are defended by Liberalism: the right to life (…) International Buddhist Ethics Committee denounces the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for declaring that it is inadmissible to grant the condition of person to the embryo, this being a violation of international treaties that the IACHR allegedly seeks to defend, such as the American Convention on Human Rights that affirms that every person has the right to have his life respected and this right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. (…) International Buddhist Ethics Committee denounces the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for misinterpreting the letter of the Convention, stating that the human embryo would not be a person, which provides one of the worst legal precedents that there can be, since it would enable then not only abortion but also the experimentation with human embryos, because if they are not people then they would not have human rights and fundamental freedoms. (…) International Buddhist Ethics Committee confirms the absolute non-existence of the right to abortion, which is an invention of corrupt politicians and the media that despise the intrinsic dignity of human life, its Buddhic-nature or its natural rights, confirming that effectively every woman has the right to reproductive autonomy and to access reproductive health services as long as this does not imply the homicide of the child, since freely and responsibly deciding the number of her children and the size of her family can be solved adequately through the compassionate resource of adoption instead of resorting to the inhuman resource of abortion. (…) International Buddhist Ethics Committee agrees with Pope Francis I that abortion is a method very similar to the eugenics used by Nazism. (…) the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights violates human rights to life, peace and integrity, violating both the Argentine Constitution that considers the embryo as a person, but also violating the very American Convention on Human Rights that protects life from the moment of conception.”Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights: “Case No. 20-2016: United Nations (UN) & Secretary General Ban Ki-moon & Secretary General Antonio Guterres. PRONOUNCEMENT on philosopher Santiago Kovadloff. August 9th, 2018. (…) Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights confirms that in April 2018 the philosopher Santiago Kovadloff issued a statement in favor of the legalization and gratuity of abortion, stating to be committed to individual rights and gender equality, despite the fact that abortion obviously violates the fundamental right to life. (…) The Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights decides once again that this homicidal act of abortion constitutes infanticide, although it is recommended that it not be addressed through criminal justice but through restorative justice, so that funds must be inverted in an adequate way for prevention by means of education. (…) Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights denounces that what was affirmed by the philosopher Santiago Kovadloff is totally false when he stated that the beginning of human existence is debatable and that it depends on beliefs, maliciously ignoring that biological sciences have determined that human life begins from conception. (…) Buddhist Tribunal Human Rights affirms that this immoral position of Kovadloff has motivations that are not genuine, since it is recalled that on January 22, 2006 this philosopher published a great text entitled "When having daughters is a bad business" ("Cuando tener hijas es un mal negocio") where he courageously claimed that the economic and technological progress of China and India is presented along with a field of delay and horror scenario which would be the millions of abortions of female embryos that occur in both countries, which was described by Kovadloff as a retrograde and criminal catastrophe. (…) Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights agrees with the original position of the philosopher Santiago Kovadloff in 2006 with regard to abortion, considering it as a genocidal procedure and a variant of programmed extermination of life, consolidating human life as a means and diluting it as an end. (…) Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights asks the philosopher Santiago Kovadloff to recover his decency and ethical integrity, to return to perceive the intrinsic value of life, instead of allowing his thinking to be distorted in order to serve the political and economic powers in force, since nobody who has a righteous thinking would qualify a procedure as genocidal and then, a decade after, beginning to publicly defend it as a XXI century human right. (…) Buddhist Tribunal on Human Rights will continue to denounce the crimes against humanity committed against unborn children around the world, requiring that thinkers and philosophers maintain ethical positions of righteousness and integrity.”Evidence 4: Motive of Hsing Yun violations is silence facing Abortions and Human Rights Violations in ChinaIan Johnson (New York Times): “Fo Guang Shan is perhaps the most successful of these groups. Since coming to China more than a decade ago, it has set up cultural centers and libraries in major Chinese cities and printed and distributed millions of volumes of its books through state-controlled publishers. While the government has tightened controls on most other foreign religious organizations, Fo Guang Shan has flourished, spreading a powerful message that individual acts of charity can reshape China. It has done so, however, by making compromises. The Chinese government is wary of spiritual activity it does not control — the Falun Gong an example — and prohibits mixing religion and politics. That has led Fo Guang Shan to play down its message of social change and even its religious content, focusing instead on promoting knowledge of traditional culture and values. The approach has won it high-level support; President Xi Jinping is one of its backers. (…) Fo Guang Shan is led by one of modern China’s most famous religious figures, the Venerable Master Hsing Yun. I met him late last year at the temple in Yixing, in a bright room filled with his calligraphy and photos of senior Chinese leaders who have received him in Beijing. (…)When I asked him what he hoped to accomplish by spreading Buddhism — proselytizing is illegal in China — his eyebrows arched in mock amusement. “I don’t want to promote Buddhism! I only promote Chinese culture to cleanse humanity.” As for the Communist Party, he was unequivocal: “We Buddhists uphold whoever is in charge. Buddhists don’t get involved in politics.” That has not been true for most of Master Hsing Yun’s life. (…) Under President Xi, who started a campaign to promote traditional Chinese faiths, especially Buddhism, as part of his program for “the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the government’s support has grown. He has met with Master Hsing Yun four times since 2012, telling him in one meeting: “I’ve read all the books that master sent me.” While Mr. Xi’s government has tightened restrictions on Christianity and Islam, it has allowed Fo Guang Shan to open cultural centers in four cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. The organization’s students include government officials, who don gray tunics and trousers and live like monks or nuns for several days, reciting the sutras and learning about Master Hsing Yun’s philosophy. But unlike in Taiwan, where it held special services during national crises and encouraged members to participate in public affairs, Fo Guang Shan avoids politics in China. There is no mention of civic activism, and it never criticizes the party.”Evidence 5: Forced Abortion and Forced Sterilization in ChinaLucy Ash (BBC News): “Chen's first child was a boy so when she conceived for a second time, she was made to have an abortion. When she got pregnant again she went into hiding and gave birth to a daughter. But she was so afraid of a crippling fine for breaking the rules, the little girl had to live under cover. If you didn't pay the fine, known as a social maintenance fee, your child didn't exist in the eyes of the state. In practical terms that meant no access to school, healthcare or even the right to buy a train ticket. (…) Shandong, a coastal province between Beijing and Shanghai, with a population of 96 million, has a reputation for being particularly harsh. In recent years a string of people accused of having unauthorised children have been illegally detained. (…) In 2013 the young man's wife conceived without permission - the couple already had a daughter. Despite the relaxation of rules in rural areas, they had been banned from having a second child because their first baby was born before the mother was 20 years old. So the family hid her from the prying eyes of the family planning officials until she was six months pregnant - at that point they believed the authorities would no longer be able to force her to have an abortion. They were wrong. Family planning officers and village leaders stopped the young man on his way home from work and asked him where his wife was. "I told them I didn't know," he says. "So they started beating me."(…) He was bundled into a minivan and taken to a nearby hotel where the beatings continued. The wife's sister was also kept prisoner for three days to increase the pressure. She wasn't let out until the family handed over 10,000 yuan ($1,500; ?1,060) - allegedly hotel expenses. Then the parents-in-law were locked up and shown how their son was being treated. They offered to pay an above average fine or social maintenance fee of 70,000 yuan ($10,700; ?7,400) to keep the baby but to no avail. "They were kicking my son and slamming him against the floor," says the mother. "I just couldn't bear it any more so I called my daughter-in-law to say 'Let's give up the baby.'" As she wipes her eyes with her sleeve, her husband looks miserable and sheepish. Since the detention was unlawful, I ask the couple if they contacted the police. "I made a phone call to the local discipline inspection," says the father. "But I was told that they couldn't intervene in the work of family planning officers - those guys are so powerful they just do whatever they want." The family have contacted a lawyer, Wu Youshui, who has a track record of investigating abuses by family planning officers across China. They are hoping those responsible will be brought to justice and that they will be refunded some of the money they paid, but the young man says the family has been torn apart by what happened. It is of little solace to him or his wife that China now has a two-child policy. "The harm is there and there is no way to repair it," he says. The mother-in-law adds that she went to the hospital and saw the aborted foetus of her grandchild. Three years have gone by but her grief is still raw. "The baby was well-formed," she sobs. "You could even see his fingernails. He was a bit small, but very well-developed already." The one-child policy has a bitter legacy - it has caused heartache in millions of Chinese families. The supreme irony is that the country's problem today is not overpopulation, but a shrinking labour force that threatens future growth. (…) The one-child policy in numbers: China's government says the one-child policy, officially in place since 1979, has prevented 400 million births - although it has been disputed whether the policy had such a big impact; It is estimated there are now 33 million more men than women in China; By 2050, it's predicted that a quarter of China's population will be 65 or older;”Steven W. Mosher: “There is often a striking distance between Beijing’s policy pronouncements and the harsh reality on the ground. In fact, not long ago I testified before Congress that “Despite the new Two-Child Policy, the Chinese Communist Party remains as firmly in control of fertility as ever…the Chinese state, rather than the Chinese people, decide how many children are to be born in China each year.” (…)Now, based on the initial results of our investigation, my concerns were not misplaced. Not only do forced abortions in China continue, but also the levels of coercion are actually higher today than in the recent past. ?How can this be? First of all, the Party has ordered its millions of population control police to “resolutely carry out the basic policy of Planned Births [and] thoroughly implement the policy of each couple birthing two children.” (…) While every couple in China is now allowed a second child four years after the birth of their first, other restrictions have not been relaxed. Among other things, the Planned Birth Policy forbids out-of-wedlock births and childbearing without permission—even if it is a couple’s first child. So women who violate these rules are still being hunted down and, when found, aborted and sterilized. In fact, they are being hunted down even more vigorously than before. ?In part this is because you have more population control police chasing down fewer illegally pregnant women. In part, this is because there are fewer “illegal birth” fines for these same corrupt police to divide up and pocket. Americans need to understand that, over the past four decades, China’s population control police have lived large off the suffering of the people. The huge fines they have collected from couples that had illegal children—fines averaging three to five times the family’s annual income—have funded a lifestyle for these corrupt officials far beyond what they could have afforded on their small state salaries. In fact, population control fines have been an important source of income for all county and below government officials. Corruption is rampant in China, where virtually all officials are on the take. With the new blanket two-child policy, part of their income has dried up. So they are beating down the doors of couples that they suspect of violating the new policy in an increasingly desperate effort to bolster their shrinking salaries. PRI interviewed one woman who, when she discovered she was pregnant with a second child, had gone underground. Her first child was only two years old, far too young for her to qualify for a second, even under the two-child policy. She was determined not to have an abortion, so she stayed off the streets and out of sight until she was able to travel to a secret location where she would be safe. If she was discovered to be pregnant and refused the government’s order to have an abortion, she knew what would follow. As the parents of an “illegal” child, she and her husband would both lose their secure government jobs and their government subsidized housing. They would have no income and no way to take care of their children and her husband’s elderly parents. The huge fine that the population control police would gleefully levy upon them would wipe out their savings and leave them destitute. We asked her if things were better under the two-child policy. “No,” she said emphatically, “they are much worse. So very much worse.” “It isn’t as simple as everyone gets two children,” she went on, “each local authority makes up their own rules. They are all trying to make up for their lost income. They charge for the permits that must be obtained for the second child. They impose other restrictions—like how many years apart the children must be, and so on. Each of these restrictions becomes another way for the population control police to charge money and make more money. And if they catch you pregnant with an illegal child, they take everything you have.” Before the new national two-child policy, she explained, each town and county had more authority and a lot more leeway. A person’s guanxi—the relationships you have with people in power—counted for a lot. You could bribe local officials with “gifts” in return for them turning a blind eye to an “illegal” second or third child. ?The local authorities could make more lenient decisions for individuals based on these guanxi relationships, and paying off the local officials in “gifts” to have a second or third child was often much cheaper than paying the official fine. But now that everyone is allowed a second child, the authorities are more determined than ever to track down women pregnant with illegal children. It’s all about the money, she concluded. PRI is continuing its on-the-ground investigation, but it is safe to say that the two-child policy definitely does not mean a new dawn of reproductive freedom for Chinese couples. The state still controls reproduction under a state plan, and the officials charged with enforcing it are even more coercive and corrupt than ever.”: “China ended its 35-year-old policy of restricting most urban families to one child. (…) "When you create a system where you would shrink the size of a family and people would have to choose, then people would ... choose sons," Fong says. "Now China has 30 million more men than women, 30 million bachelors who cannot find brides. ... They call them guang guan, 'broken branches,' that's the name in Chinese. They are the biological dead ends of their family." (…) Fong explores the wide-ranging impact of what she calls the world's "most radical experiment" in her new book, One Child. She says that among the policy's unintended consequences is an acute gender imbalance. Fong says the policy also led to forced abortions and the confiscation of children by the authorities. (…)The one-child policy drastically reshaped the composition of China's people. So now they have a population that's basically too old and too male and down the line, maybe too few. (…) which is part of the reason why we saw so many adoptions of Chinese babies, mostly girls, in the West. (…) The Nobel economist Amartya Sen estimated there were about 100 million missing women, women that were never born or killed or aborted across Asia.”Yue Zhang (she was forced by China Government to abort): “My name is Yue Zhang, I was born in Nanjing City in China’s Jiangsu Province in 1985. At the end of August 2013, I felt nauseous and uncomfortable. I thought I was sick and went to the hospital for a check-up.? The doctor told me that I was pregnant.? Upon hearing this news, I at first felt surprised and happy. I had always dreamed of becoming a mother.? Every time I saw friends and classmates together with their child, I admired them and wanted to have a child of my own.? But after the initial excitement, I began to feel worried and frustrated, because I was not married and had separated from my boyfriend before I found out I was pregnant. In China, it is against the “family planning policy” for unmarried women to have children.? I was worried for the future of my child, worried that he or she couldn’t obtain Hukou (household registration). A child without Hukou is unable to go to school, unable to receive education, and unable to have the rights to get various vaccinations.?Such a child will also have many difficulties building a family and a career in the future. Although I had these concerns, my desire for my child helped me continue with the pregnancy. I felt happy every time the little baby moved in my womb. Around 5 months into my pregnancy, the government’s Family Planning Committee found out I was pregnant. One day the neighborhood Committee was waiting outside my house along with Family Planning Officials.? At first, they were beating around the bush, but pretty soon they disclosed the real purpose of the visit. They told me that in my situation, I could either have an abortion or pay a “social maintenance fee.” After that, they left my house to let me think about my “options.” I decided to continue with my pregnancy. Then, one month later the Family Planning Officials forcibly entered my home, telling me to choose between abortion or paying the social maintenance fee. They said if the child is born without Hukou, he will not be able to do anything. They also threatened to inform the bank to confiscate my house. They told me that they had asked my employer to fire me.? I was in anguish. I couldn’t choose either option they presented. After the officials left, I immediately inquired about the “Family Planning” and “Social Maintenance Fee” policies of Jiangsu Province.?I learned that with my annual income level, I would have to pay a “Social Maintenance Fee” of about $60,000 USD in order for my child to get Hukou. I simply couldn’t afford this huge cost.? But I never wanted to give up on this innocent little life.? My mother also couldn’t bear to see this happening.?My poor mom asked around for help and information.? She finally told me that, by the time I would give birth, we could bribe the doctor to help with the birth, and we could request a favor from the local police officers and get Hukou by paying some money. But in March of 2014, a group of six to seven people from the Family Planning Committee forced their way into my home. They set two people to watch my house. Four others dragged me into a car that had been waiting at my door. My helpless mother followed me in another car to the hospital. In the hospital, on that same afternoon, the doctor injected the abortion drug oxytocin into my abdomen.?I was trembling.?I kept shouting and struggling. The doctor left the room after the needle injection. After a few hours of stomach pain, I started to see blood and liquid flow.?In the evening, I had strong stomach pains. After another few hours, my waters broke. Then my baby came out.?I dared not open my eyes to see my baby. I could not bear to see how such a lively, new life had been silently destroyed like this. I cried and cried.? Nurses took away the remains of my little baby. I would have asked them to leave my baby with me, but I couldn’t speak.? Afterward, the doctor gave me another shot, saying that it was to stop the pain. But the pain did not stop. When they performed the operation to clean my womb, it was so unbelievably painful. Lying on that bed, I felt my body was cut open and broken. I kept crying.?My baby didn’t have a chance to come into this world and call me “Mom.” My baby didn’t have a chance to make a single sound. My baby was deprived of life by the government… For a long time, I had nightmares of the horrible ordeal.? I would dream of lying on the operating table, my stomach cut open.? I was usually dead in the dream, with a large pool of blood on the ground. All kinds of internal organs lay strewn about.? Sometimes I dreamed of my child, a small life lying in a pool of blood. I would have hallucinations and hear children crying all around me. I often blamed myself for what had happened. I hated myself for becoming pregnant before getting married, which contributed to the death of my child. The physical and psychological pain drove me at times to contemplate suicide.? My mother accompanied me through these most desperate days.?She tried in many ways to comfort me, encouraging me to travel and study.? With my mother’s encouragement and help, I traveled to the United States in December 2014. I immediately felt the culture of an open society.?I felt the air of freedom, democracy, and human rights. All this gave me the courage to sail on with my life. In May 2015, I entered a Language school in New York city to enhance my English skills. I remember in the language school we once discussed family and marriage. A classmate asked me, “I heard that in China, you can’t have multiple children, is this true?”? They were all surprised after listening to my explanation of the Chinese Family Planning policy. One student told me that if the government dared to tell her how many children she could have, or did not allow her child to be born, she would exercise her right to bear arms. This helped me to begin to realize that I was not to blame for my baby’s death. On the contrary, it was the Chinese government’s fault. China’s Family Planning Policy persecuted me and violated my legal rights. In fact, my child had the right to come into this world.? I became more informed on this issue by reading online articles from Women’s Rights in China (WRIC). In December 2015, I joined a volunteer team to fight for women’s rights in China. What I learned from interaction with other volunteers completely changed the worldview that I had received from my education in China.?I now saw things in a new light that would have been impossible for me to see while living in China.? I learned that it is a basic human right to give birth to a child and that forced abortion is an inhumane action of murder.?I also learned how to make my voice heard for myself and for others’ rights.? Most importantly, it became more clear to me that my baby’s death was not my fault. My baby died because of a serious human rights violation by the Chinese government. It is not Chinese women who should feel ashamed, but the Chinese Communist Party that should feel ashamed. We have to stand up when our legal rights are violated, share our experiences, and reveal the murderous nature of the Chinese Family Planning Policy.? I am here today not only for myself, but also representing millions of Chinese women, who to this day still cannot make decisions about their own body and their own womb. Countless stories like mine reveal that China’s inhumane murderous family planning policy is still in progress and continues to persecute women and families. The Chinese government created this wrong policy for its own interests, arbitrarily violated women’s legal rights, and deceived the Chinese people. There are millions of Chinese women who live in guilt and self-blame because of this policy. They are unaware of their rights. They struggle to have one more child and suffer all kinds of persecution without being able to appeal for justice.? My tragic experience of forced abortion by Chinese health and family planning officials used to be a memory that I was most reluctant to look back at, and even regarded it as extremely shameful. But today I understand that the victim must be brave enough to stand up and tell the truth, and show the world that the Chinese Communist Party’s family planning policy continues to murder, fine, and persecute women just like me. Despite the Chinese Communists having modified the policy, the acts of harming women and destroying lives still continues to happen.”Reggie Littlejohn (Womens Rights without Frontiers): “A close analysis of several reports coming out of China, (…) demonstrates that Chinese government sources themselves inadvertently have admitted that forced abortion continues under the Two-Child Policy. (…) Since the start of 2016, all Chinese couples have been allowed two children.? But they can have no more than that unless they are from ethnic minorities (…) Li [Bo] is (…) a loyal Communist party official who believes the state knows best and society’s needs are greater than those of individuals.? So he is matter-of-fact about the unpleasant task of telling women who couldn’t afford the fine to terminate their pregnancies. (…) From these words, uttered by a Chinese Communist Family Planning Official, we learn that: Coercive pregnancy screening continues.? Under the Two-Child Policy, Family Planning Police continue to screen women of child-bearing age for pregnancy four times a year. Forced abortion continues.? It is still illegal for single women to have babies in China, and for couples to have third children.? It appears that some may be given an opportunity to pay a fine, but Li Bo tells “those who couldn’t afford the fine to terminate their pregnancies.”? In other words, if a woman is illegally pregnant and cannot pay the fine – which can be as much as ten times her annual salary – she is forced to abort.? Forced abortion, therefore, continues under the Two-Child Policy. Women pregnant without permission are considered criminals.? Li Bo’s statement that women who are pregnant without permission “were breaking it [the law] so it is just like the clash between a policeman and a thief” demonstrates that such pregnancies are still considered illegal; and illegally pregnant women are regarded lawbreakers deserving of punishment, just like thieves. Forced abortion continues to cause unrest.? Li Bo is correct in adding that “as long as restrictions are in place, such clashes will continue.”? This statement is an admission that these clashes – often resulting in forced abortion – continue to this day, due to the two-child restrictions. (…) A July 22, 2016, Sixth Tone article entitled, “Guangdong Families Told to Have Abortion or Lose Job,” discussed two Guangdong families.? Both families were remarried.? Both families were pregnant with a third child, when counting children from previous marriages.? One family was told to abort or both husband and wife would lose their government jobs.? The other family was told they must pay a fine of 260,000 yuan, the equivalent of $39,000 U.S. – “a huge amount of money” for this family (…) The fact that Sixth Tone is a state-controlled media outlet implies an admission by the Chinese government that it is continuing to forcibly abort women who get pregnant without permission. (…) Forcing women to choose between having and abortion and losing their jobs is a form of coercion.? Women can be forced to abort by physical or financial coercion. (…) Forced abortion continues in China to this day, by admission of Chinese government sources, either through the words of its officials or its official publications.? This atrocity must be eradicated from the face of the earth.”John Sudworth (BBC News): “One year ago this week, China announced that what had become perhaps the most widely recognised symbol of Communist Party rule - the one-child policy - was to be scrapped. (…) The old policy - introduced in 1979 to tackle what policymakers saw as the impending crisis of overpopulation - is estimated by the government to have prevented up to 400 million births, in part through the now well-documented use of forced abortions and sterilisations. (…) So it is little wonder that the mere relaxing of the limit on family size, from one child to two, has done little to assuage the fears of those who fall foul of the new rule. To mark the first anniversary of the announcement, we set out to investigate what the new policy really means in practice. And what we have discovered suggests that the brutal machinery of enforcement is still in place along with the Chinese state's insistence on the right of control over women's wombs. (…) It is an illustration of how the one-child policy has bent and blurred the moral lines and made such state-sponsored violence seem unexceptional. The official tells me that in his district, under the new two-child policy all women of childbearing age are required to report for two ultrasound examinations every year. Those found to be pregnant with a third baby "will be advised accordingly", he says. To get a sense of the wider reality, I ask a female colleague to telephone a number of family planning centres at random. Pretending to be a mother, pregnant with her third baby but wanting to keep it, she asks the officials what her options are. According to Chinese law the only legal sanction available to the state for a woman violating the family planning laws is a large fine. And, as all the officials we speak to on the phone make clear, with the change in policy from one to two children, the fine remains firmly in place. Levied at up to 10 times annual average income, these fines are often enough in themselves to act as a powerful disincentive to continue with the pregnancy. But our research shows officials going further, engaging in coercive home visits with the aim of "persuading" women to have abortions. "If you're reported to us, then we'll find you and we'll persuade you not to give birth to that baby," one said. "We'll definitely find you and persuade you to do an abortion," said another. When asked whether our hypothetical mother might actually face physical force, rather than just heavy persuasion, one official said it was still possible "in principle". Another, in answer to the same question, said: "It's hard to say." And when asked if a woman could just have the baby and pay the fine yet another official answered: "No. You just can't." China's one-child policy was scrapped, not out of the recognition that a woman should be free to choose what she does with her own body and her own fertility, but because the Communist Party finally woke up to the economic consequences of the falling birth rate.” Steven Mosher: “Last year the Party leadership announced an end to the one-child-per-family restriction. Some observers na?vely thought that the move to a two-child-per-family policy would spell an end to coercion and put China’s millions of population control police out of work. In fact, Stanford University has even proudly announced an ambitious program to retrain these now “superfluous” population police as “child development experts.” (...) First of all, the men and women of China’s population police are roundly hated in China. These are the shock troops of the one-child policy after all, the ones who for decades have been harassing and arresting, imprisoning and aborting the babies of mothers pregnant without government permission. (…) [A]s everyone in China knows, these same thugs are still storming the homes of couples suspected of conceiving an illegal?third?child. As this year’s?State Department?report confirms, China is still enforcing “a coercive birth-limitation policy that, despite the lifting of one-child-per-family restrictions, in some cases resulted in forced abortion (sometimes at advanced stages of pregnancy)." The number of abortions performed each year in China may be more than even I had thought. China’s National Health Population and Planned Birth Commission reports that 13 million unplanned pregnancies are terminated annually. But this year’s State Department report adds that “at least an additional 10 million chemically induced abortions were performed in nongovernment facilities.” This brings the total number of unborn children killed annually in China to 23 million, a truly staggering number. (…) Of course?that Chinese government is not going to admit to committing even one forced abortion, much less to the millions that it actually carried out. (…) On a more sobering note, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are 40-50 million abortions performed worldwide each year. With 23 million of these abortions occurring in China, it would seem that the PRC, with only 20 percent of the world’s population, accounts for roughly 50 percent of the world’s abortions. Such reckless disregard for the sanctity of human life, such wanton destruction of tens of millions of unborn children, must be counted as one of the costs of China’s continuing Planned Birth policy. Even if they didn't force each and every one of those 23 million women to have an abortion, they certainly encouraged them to.”Steven Ertelt (Life News): “Started in 1980, the policy, which is the most severe in the world, has resulted in severe human rights abuses. Family planning officials frequently jail couples who refuse to comply, sentence them to house arrest or labor camps, revoke jobs or governmental support, use physical harassment or violence and often target other family members. There are more than 13 million abortions a year, or 1,500 an hour, in China, according to government researchers. That’s thanks in large part to the one-child policy — which encourages abortions and results in forced abortions and sex-selection abortions. Despite the apparent good news that China is moving to a two-child policy, Reggie Littlejohn, one of the top human rights activists exposing the gendercide that takes place in China, tells that people are celebrating too soon. Littlejohn says the move to a two-child limit “comes as no surprise, given the demographic disaster?China now faces as a result of its?One Child Policy. (…) “Women will still be forcibly aborted under a universal 2-child policy.? We need to keep up the pressure until China abandons all coercive population control,” Littlejohn added.”Rick Santorum: “The Chinese government, (…) in 1979, not only embraced elective abortions but made forced abortion a matter of policy for millions of Chinese families, especially the poorest ones. (…)Despite the furor created on the internet this past summer by a picture of Feng Jianmei — whose blood-covered seven-month-old daughter appeared in the photo beside her on a hospital bed — there was relatively little outrage directed at the Chinese government from foreign governments or NGOs that advocate for women’s rights. Nor do the names of?Pan Chunyan, whom officials abducted from a grocery store and subjected to an abortion at 8 months, or Zhang Wenfang, who was involuntarily sterilized after her 9-month-old baby was aborted, appear in the news outside of a handful of pro-life and faith-based websites. The NGO All Girls Allowed?estimates that ten percent of abortions in China are coerced. According to its own statistics, the Chinese government performed 13 million abortions in 2008 and 400 million abortions since the policy was inaugurated in 1979. (…) “The Global Burden of Disease study conducted by the World Bank, World Health Organization and Harvard University, identifies China with 56.6% of all female suicides worldwide, an astonishing figure considering that only 21% of the world’s female population lives in China.” No one has been able to research the link between forcible abortions and sterilizations and the high rate of female suicides, but the relationship between violence, depression and suicide among women is well documented. Chen Guangcheng, a blind activist, was outraged enough by this policy to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of 130,000 women in his county who were forcibly aborted or sterilized. His actions landed him in jail, and then under house arrest, for a total of 7 years. Chen’s activism has been lauded by the international human rights community. Mo Yan, China’s first Nobel laureate in literature, also documented the bitter reality of the coercive enforcement of the one-child policy in his novels. But the same activists and politicians who laud Chen and celebrate Mo pay much less attention to the issue that concerns them. (…) Forced abortion and sterilization are gross violations of a woman’s physical integrity. They’re a form of torture that should outrage anyone who cares about justice for women — but they’re greeted with deafening silence because of the battles over elective abortions in the West. The politics of abortion in the West makes normally outspoken women’s advocates reticent. The U.N. women’s agency prominently displays its work in China against domestic violence, but says nothing of the threat that forced abortion and sterilization pose to the health and well-being of a far larger number of Chinese women. ?(…) No one can be pro-woman but neutral on forced abortions. Even those who wish to protect elective abortions should wish to prevent forced abortions. The sheer violence and pain they inflict upon women should be enough to bring all of us to work together for change.?We who have the freedom to speak out should use that power for Feng Jianmei and the millions of women like her.”David Bereit: “Amnesty International, the well known human rights group, has issued its 2005 Amnesty International report which again shows China’s continuing abuse of women due to the one-child policy. (…) The Amnesty International 2005 report states that “Serious violations against women and girls continued to be reported as a result of the enforcement of the family planning policy, including forced abortions and sterilizations.” The report gives the specific example of one woman’s experiences. “Mao Hengfeng was sent to a labour camp for 18 months’ ‘Re-education through Labour’ in April for persistently petitioning the authorities over a forced abortion 15 years earlier when she became pregnant in violation of China’s family planning policy. She was reportedly tied up, suspended from the ceiling and severely beaten in the labour camp. She had been detained several times in the past in psychiatric units where she had been forced to undergo shock therapy.” (…) Arthur Dewey, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for the bureau of population, refugees, and migration made a presentation to the House International Relations Committee and stated that “UNFPA support of, and participation in, China’s population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion, thus triggering the Kemp-Kasten prohibition on support to any organization that supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization,” (…) His report also stated that “China’s birth planning law and policies retain harshly coercive elements in law and practice. Forced abortion and sterilization are egregious violations of human rights, and should be of concern to the global human rights community, as well as to the Chinese themselves. Unfortunately, we have not seen willingness in other parts of the international community to stand with us on these human rights issues.” Li Min Lai admitted to aggressively enforcing the one-child policy in her workplace - at one time even camping out in front of a woman employee’s home, eventually coercing her into aborting her seven-month-old unborn child.”NY Post: “In one year alone, 1983, China sterilized over 20 million people, more than the combined population of the three largest US cities, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. But even with a looser two-child limit there were still rules people found onerous, such as a requirement throughout the 1990s that women be sterilized after the birth of a second child, or a requirement that births must be spaced at least five years apart. What if a woman didn’t want more children but would prefer not to be sterilized? What if a couple got pregnant with their second child, say, three years after the first, instead of five? That was when even Yicheng’s benign machinery would show its ugly side, according to Huangjiapu’s former village head Huang Denggao. The usual mode of punishment was fines: Parents of children born out of plan would be hit with fines between five and 10 times their annual disposable income. “If the couple is too poor to pay, we’ll take things from their house, but only in a few cases,” said Huang. TVs were a favorite, he said — worth a villager’s whole annual income — as were tables, bicycles and washing machines. These items were usually collected by a team of 10 part-time enforcers (usually “strong healthy young men”) and sold off, and the proceeds were kept by the township. To Huang, these actions did not count as coercion. Rather, he called such tactics “persuasion.” One of the most difficult tasks Huang had to do was persuade women to be sterilized, he said. Many women feared the procedure. Side effects such as excessive bleeding were not uncommon, especially given the conveyor-belt manner in which some of these procedures were done. The village women tried to bargain, said Huang. Some asked to use barrier contraceptives instead, or promised not to have more than two children. “But it was my job to get people to do the operation, or else I would not be able to accomplish my target,” said Huang. (…) When the one-child policy was launched in the 1980s, it was clear that enforcement of such a hugely unpopular policy would be difficult. In the beginning, execution of the one-child policy ranged from lax to excessive across China. In some parts of the country, pregnant women without birth permits were marched off in handcuffs to undergo forced abortions. (…) As recently as 2010, a mass sterilization campaign for close to 10,000 people was held in Puning City, Guangdong. According to Amnesty International, almost 1,400 relatives of couples targeted for sterilization were detained, to pressure these couples to consent. I believe, however, that the nature of this abuse increasingly shifted away from forced abortions and sterilizations toward stiffer enforcement of fines. This was partly because these so-called social compensation fees ( shehui fuyangfei ) grew to become a major source of revenue for many counties, especially poorer ones. Over the past decade China implemented land tax reforms, requiring provinces to hand over income to the national treasury for redistribution. In practice, this meant that lower-level county and village governments lost almost all independent sources of income. The one exception was birth fines, which did not have to be handed over to the central government. “It’s a common saying, for money, ‘Big cities depend on land, small towns depend on birth planning,’ ” said journalist Matthew Pang, who exhaustively documented such abuses by family-planning officials in a small town in Hunan.”: “Official data from China’s health ministry has revealed just how pervasive abortions have been in China since it instituted its one-child policy. Since 1971, Chinese doctors have performed 336 million abortions in a country with a population of 1.35 billion. They have also performed 196 million sterilizations and inserted 403 million intrauterine devices, a birth control procedure that some have said are forced on women in China, reports the?Financial Times.”The Guardian: “For more than 30 years, China has upheld a strict one-child policy. And despite the country's growing prosperity, novelist Ma Jian discovered that ruthless squads still brutally enforce the law with vast fines – and compulsory sterilisations and abortions. (…) Although initially introduced as a "temporary measure", more than 30 years later this barbaric experiment in social engineering is, astonishingly, still in force. China's totalitarian government may have relaxed its control of the means of production, but it has maintained firm control of the means of reproduction, and continues to intrude into the most intimate aspects of an individual's life, stunting relationships, destroying traditional family life and spreading fear. Two generations of children have grown up without siblings, uncles, aunts or cousins. Women have lost sovereignty of their bodies. The state owns their ovaries, fallopian tubes and wombs, and has become the silent, malevolent third participant in every act of love. (…) In 2007, I read of riots breaking out in Bobai County in China's south-western Guangxi province. Under pressure from higher authorities to meet birth targets, local officials had launched a vicious crackdown on family-planning violators. Squads had rounded up 17,000 women and subjected them to sterilisations and abortions and had extracted 7.8m yuan (?800,000) in fines for "illegal births", ransacking the homes of families who refused to pay. Tens of thousands of peasants occupied Bobai County town and set fire to government buildings to protest against the crackdown. This was the largest outbreak of popular unrest since the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. (…)A man with a motorbike agreed to take me to meet a family who had been persecuted the previous year. "They live in a remote valley, far from the nearest village, so the local officials are unlikely to see us," he said as I climbed on behind him. He drove me through dark green hills, past brick shacks painted with half-defaced slogans, one of which read: "After the first child: insert an IUD; after the second: sterilise; after the third: kill, kill kill!" When we arrived at the house, Ah-Li was laying out shrivelled, salted vegetables to dry in the sun. She had to care for four children and her husband's elderly parents, and looked much older than her 30 years. When I asked her about the forced abortion she suffered, she flinched. "It crippled me," she said. "I couldn't stand up straight for weeks afterwards. I had to spend hundreds of yuan on painkillers." (…) "Yes, the gods are always against me!" she sighed. "I tried to travel to the county town to lodge a complaint, but the police turned me back. If you write about my story on the internet, don't mention my surname." She rose to her feet and brushed the dung from her trousers. "I paid thousand-yuan fines for my second, third and fourth daughters, but the squad told me that those didn't count, and I'd have to pay another 10,000 yuan for each of them." "Was the aborted baby a girl or a boy?" I asked, feeling uncomfortable questioning a stranger about such matters. "I don't know," she answered. "When the squad turned up, I was cradling my youngest. The officers tore her from my arms, kicked me in the belly and forced me into the minibus. In the clinic, they gave me a shot in the arm. When I woke up two days later, the baby in my belly was gone. I didn't realise until a month afterwards that they'd sterilised me as well. Every woman in this county has been sterilised – apart from the ones who managed to escape. Now look what I've become: a useless, withered wreck." From behind her dark fringe she eyed me with a look of distrust and despair. On the way back to Bobai town, I asked the driver where the escaped women had fled. "At the start of the crackdown, many pregnant women went to hide near the reservoir, but the police hunted most of them down and took them off for abortions. The ones who escaped fled to the Yangtze. Very few of them have returned." I packed my bag, then set off for the river. (…) "Most of the women who come to me for abortions would carry to term if I found them a rich couple to buy their child," she said, counting the notes I had handed her. "The government orphanages sell baby girls for 40,000 yuan [?4,250], and they're usually undernourished or deformed in some way. (…) "I read in the papers a few years ago that the police near here stopped a van, searched the boot and found 28 baby girls tied up in black plastic bags," I said, rubbing my sore gums. "One of them had already suffocated to death. The hospital staff who sold them to the gang were tracked down and executed." "Those child traffickers have no conscience – they sell babies by the batch," she said. "I sell on a strictly one-to-one basis. I'm performing a good deed, and I only take a small cut. The fine for having a second child has risen to 10,000 yuan [?1,060]." (…) A few days later, while walking along the banks of the Pearl river, I saw a dead baby lying in an opened black plastic bag. I had seen discarded foetuses in China many times before: purple lumps of flesh lying on rubbish heaps or inside communal dustbins. But this was a pale, fully grown, newborn baby, with the umbilical cord still attached. A passerby had spotted it, and was prodding it with a wooden stick. Female infanticide and sex-selective abortions are one of the many unintended consequences of the one-child policy. For every 118 boys in China, there are now only 100 girls. In a small village in remote Guangdong, a contact took me to her local family planning centre, and told the director that I was a state reporter from Beijing. He took me to his office and we talked for hours. Backlit by a dusty window, he leaned over his desk and showed me the record book that meticulously charted the menstrual cycles and pelvic examination results of every woman of childbearing age in the village. He said 98% of the 280 women were fitted with IUDs. Every three months, he broadcasts an announcement through the village summoning every woman for a mandatory ultrasound to check that her IUD is still in place. "How do you know when a woman is menstruating?" I asked him. "She has to report her cycles to the family planning monitor assigned to her street," he said, his silhouette now black against the bright window. "And how do they know she isn't lying?" "If the monitors suspect anything, they'll rummage through the woman's bins to check for soiled sanitary towels." "And what if you discover she's fallen pregnant without permission?" "We set to work on her." "What do you mean?" "We persuade her to have an abortion. If she refuses, she must pay a fine – three times her annual salary. A few years ago, the county authorities insisted we meet our targets, so we couldn't let anyone off. We had to round up every woman who was pregnant without permission and bring her here for a termination." "What if they refused to come?" "There were four of us – they didn't stand a chance!" He grinned and sucked on his cigarette; then his face dropped, and he fell silent. "My cousin was six months pregnant at the time. I had to drag her here myself and oversee the termination. She won't speak to me, even to this day …" Before I left, he took me to the adjoining room and showed me the ultrasound machine and the steel table on which abortions are performed. I stared for a while at the stirrups hanging loosely on either side and at the large plastic bucket on the ground. In the far corner of the room was a faded poster proclaiming: "Girls are as good as boys." Chinese officials recently announced that 336m abortions and 196m sterilisations have been performed under the one-child policy. An abortion or sterilisation performed on a woman against her will is an atrocity that, one might assume, could only happen during temporary periods of social psychosis or war. But the Chinese government has been committing these crimes against humanity systematically, and on a massive scale, for more than three decades, during a period of peace and growing prosperity. The elimination of life and assault on human dignity dictated by the one-child policy belong with the worst tragedies of the past 100 years. In March, Communist party leaders confirmed that "China will not change its basic state policy on family planning". They continue to assert that the policy has prevented a Malthusian apocalypse and created economic growth. But demographers such as Wang Feng, Yong Cai and Boachang Gu claim it is not only evil, but unnecessary: the birth rate was already in decline before the policy was introduced, and would have continued to decline naturally due to urbanisation and rising incomes. China's problem today is not overpopulation, but a shrinking labour force that now threatens the country's future growth. It is this, rather than any concern for human rights violations, that is prompting sections of the party to consider phasing out the policy. The Chinese dictators will not willingly relinquish total control of reproduction. But if the policy isn't stopped soon, and the violations and massacres committed in its name are not recognised, the consequences will damage the nation for generations to come.” Kristen Walker Hatten: “In parts of Asia – especially India and China – baby girls are undesirable, even unacceptable. In China, a ”one-child” policy, enforced by the state with forced sterilizations and abortions, exacerbates gendercide, leading some parents to take matters into their own hands. If you’re allowed only two children, and you already have one girl…well, in a culture where males are valued much more highly than females, it’s not hard to imagine what follows. Baby girls are stuck in sacks and thrown in rivers and down wells, even dumped upside-down in buckets of water. The United Nations estimates that about 200 million girls are missing from the world due to this rampant genocide – now commonly called “gendercide.” The effects of these heinous practices, as time goes on, could be devastating in parts of Asia, as men look around and realize that all their potential wives do not exist. It’s A Girl takes a close look at gendercide, its roots, and its effects: The war against girls is rooted in centuries-old tradition and sustained by deeply ingrained cultural dynamics which, in combination with government policies, accelerate the elimination of girls… (…) Nearly a quarter of a billion girl-children, unborn and born, have been killed. But that’s in Communist China”Fox News: “"Historically infanticide was something that was practiced in poor places in China," Mosher said. "But when the one-child policy came into effect we began to see in the wealthy areas of China, what had never been done before in history — the killing of little girls." In recent years, female infanticide has taken a back seat to sex-selective abortion or female feticide, due to the advent of amniocentesis and ultrasound technology as well as other prenatal sex selection techniques, many of which are now readily available in clinics and doctors’ offices. "We feel it's a serious problem that everybody should be concerned about and aware of," said Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee. "This is a form of abortion that, from our point of view is especially egregious. Abortion is claimed to help women; obviously in these cases, females are the direct victims, because women in these cultures are not valued. ”Fr. Mark Hodges (): “Last year, China replaced its oppressive one-child policy with a "two-child policy," but the principle is the same: forced abortions and infanticide for any child conceived after the second. (…)"Regardless of how many girls have been hidden rather than aborted or abandoned, we know that true gendercide also exists in China," Littlejohn told LifeSiteNews in an email. "Women are pressured to abort or abandon their babies just because they are girls — rather than simply hiding them. Second daughters are particularly vulnerable.”Winter Wall: “Due to the cultural stigma of having female children, the stringent [one-child] policy has led to millions of female infants being aborted, abandoned, or killed. As China struggles with population control, families are faced with the necessity of bearing male children, who are perceived as being more valuable to the family and who are often charged with the care of their elderly parents. Consequently, the elimination of female infants has created a skewed sex ratio in China’s population—the social, economic, and physical repercussions of which are yet to be fully realized. Female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, drowning, and the withholding of health care and nutrition are only a few consequences of the restrictive one-child policy. (…) It is believed that nearly half of all Chinese women of reproductive age (or their husbands) have been sterilized as a result of the government’s insistence on family planning. The Chinese government has encouraged sterilization, intra-uterine device (IUD) insertions, and abortions in countrywide campaigns that started in 1973. Despite the laws against sex-selective abortion in China, abortions are still widely executed with impunity.”Barbara H. Settles and Xuewen Sheng: “Current birth planning (jihua shengyu) program of People’s Republic of China, featured by the one-child-per-couple policy (the one child policy), has been one of the largest and most dramatic population-control campaigns in the world, receiving both praise and sharp evaluation over the past quarter of a century. It has been so successfully implemented in China that the nation’s population growth rate dropped significantly. This policy has been intensely criticized internationally for violating fundamental human rights evidenced by the forced sterilizations and abortions, and the wide-spread abandonment and/or neglect of baby girls. (…) At the end of the 50s, the party choose to “propagandize and popularize” birth control in all densely populated areas, and “promote childbirth according to plan”, which was followed in the 60s by a propaganda campaign promoting late marriage and a two-child family under the slogan of “one is a good few, two is just enough, and three is over” (White 1994; 2006). The implementation of birth control policy was gradually transferred from a voluntary-based birth planning program to a state-based control of population growth.(…) The official goals in the 80's were to reach zero growth and to keep the population at around 1.2 billion by the year 2000 (Hao 1988). People were encouraged to have only one child through financial and material incentives, such as paid pregnancy leave for up to three years, a 510 percent salary increase, and preferential access to housing, schools, and health services (Richards 1996; Ching and Penny 1999). Couples having a second child were excluded from these benefits and suffered penalties such as financial levies on each additional child and sanctions, which ranged from social pressure to curtailed career prospects in government jobs. Specific measures and implementation procedures varied from province to province Feng and Hao 1992) and from time to time over the implementation process. (…) While the one child policy was stated as a voluntary-based birth-control program, it was implemented through a grass-root political mobilization and a set of strict administrative controls such as residential registration, certificate of birth approval, and birth certification (White 2006). Coercion in terms of sterilization, forced abortion, and sanctions in terms of housing and economics have been used and provided a major leverage for world criticism of the policy (Mosher 2006). The officials charged with implementing the policies were subject to punishments and rewards themselves. In general, urban couples were easier to persuade and control, because most of them worked in state owned enterprises where the political control and administrative forces were strong. Only under few exceptions, may urban residents have a second birth. In Zhejiang province a couple could have a second child if 1) the first child is a girl or has a defect, 2) one remarried partner had no child by the previous marriage, 3) they belonged to certain group of workers such as miners, or 4) both partners were themselves from one child families (Hesketh and Zhu 1997; Short and Fengying 1998). Rural families were more difficult to convince. (…) They turned to stringent birth control campaigns, which in the policy's earlier years resulted in many women being bullied into abortions and sterilization. Village level family planning workers were caught between the state's demands and the determination of their friends and neighbors. Gradually villagers developed a process of negotiation and compromise (Greenhalgh 1992), which allowed a degree of flexibility within the policy. Through the combination of reward, persuasion, intimidation, and coercion more than 25 million people were sterilized and the number of abortions and IUD insertions increased, resulting in a remarkable fall of birthrates from 21.1% in 1981 to 17.5% in 1984 (White 2006: 73). Since 1985, softening of policy and relaxing of requirements for second birth has occurred, although details of regulations varied from province to province. By 2001, a large majority of provinces relaxed the conditions for a second birth, if 1) the first child was a girl in rural areas (19 provinces), 2) the couple were only children (27 provinces), and 3) the only child was disabled (31 provinces) (Xin Hua News Agency 2001). (…)The main international criticism about one-child policy is its consequence of promoting discrimination against female newborns, who may be aborted, abandoned, or unregistered, and who are most likely in disadvantaged status of health care and education. (…)Three factors including sex-selected abortion, female infanticide and abandonment, and unreported female birth were responsible for China’s unbalanced sex ratios (White 2006). The easy access in China in the 1980s to the ultrasound technology for fetal sex identification made it easier to guarantee the birth of a son. Many children with disabilities were diagnosed through ultrasound exams and modern techniques (Shao and Herbig 1994), and eventually aborted. Over 16,000 abandoned children were brought to civil affair departments in Hunan province between 1986 and 1990 (Johnson 1996). While figures on abandonment are lacking at the national level some estimates suggest perhaps 4.5% of babies, mostly female, are abandoned (Yat-ming 1998). In 2000, Hudson and den Boer reported that there is estimated to be 40.6 million missing women in China. About 1/3 of the sex bias may be due to underreporting of female newborns (Cai and Lavey 2003).Those unreported girls are usually disadvantaged in access public education and social welfare, however, informal adoption may shelter many of them.” Bob Fu, President of China Aid & Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers: “Best Practices – Infanticide Website for Chinese Gynecologists and Obstetricians: [Editor’s Note: The following text was copied from a current website for Chinese gynecologists and obstetricians. The name of the thread is “What if the infant is still alive after induced labor?” There are eighteen comments in this thread. They have been numbered for ease of reference. Next to each number is the name of the person who posted the comment; under each number is the date and time of that comment. This Case is also available as a separate document, with the English translations embedded into the webpage, so that those interested can have a direct view of the website with the original Mandarin text.] 1. Wuhulili: What if the infant is still alive after induced labor? Post By：2009-4-13 21:33:00 My hospital has applied induced labor using an Ethacridine injection to an 18-year-old premarital pregnant girl. But because she had already been pregnant for 8 months when given induced labor, the infant was born alive. The girl's family members made a big noise that they wanted to leave the infant in our hospital for us to raise it up. What should we do now? 2. Fengjingduhao: Post By：2009-4-13 21:37:00 You need the family members' signature for induced labor. Also you need their signature to decide what to do with the infant after induced labor. 3. Wuhulili: Post By：2009-4-13 21:45:00 But they didn't sign for it. 4. Xuexia: 2009-4-13 22:13:00 Actually you should have punctured the fetus’ skull. By doing this there will be less damage and also you won't get an infant born alive. 5. Bingyu2008: Post By：2009-4-13 23:03:00 This is really troublesome. I haven't met this problem before. But my chief in my hospital told us that we should try our best to avoid getting infants coming out alive. 6. Likailian: Post By：2009-4-14 13:28:00 There are some pregnant women that are over 28 weeks pregnant or even nine months pregnant asking for induced labor. Some of them ask for it because they don't have "Birth Permits"; some of them are premarital pregnancies; some of them want boys but they get girls so they are not satisfied. It is illegal to kill the infants alive after they are born, but we also want to help those women. Sometimes we also have to do this for the profit of our department. What do you think? So I agree with the 4th comment (puncturing the fetus’ skull before it is born). 7. Yumihua: Post By：2009-4-14 15:07:00 We usually don't do induced labor to women who are over 28 weeks pregnant. Even if we have to do this, we will inform them that the infants might be still alive after induced labor. It is a life after the infant is born. We couldn't just kill them like that. Many women decided not to do induced labor after hearing my advice. I myself won't do induced labor for the profit of my department or under the request of those pregnant women, because I am afraid that I will be sued someday if I do it. 8. Damohuyang: Post By：2009-4-14 20:40:00 It is very common in my area. Over 90% of 35-week infants died under induced labor. Most of them died of skull puncture. Some were alive but if the pregnant women's family members didn't want them, they would be left in trashcans. Some of them could still live for one to two days. 9. Yingzi: Post By：2009-4-14 20:46:00 This discussion is already beyond the medical field. However, we often meet this kind of problem. We don't do induced labor without medical signs or medical symptoms. -- You need the family members' signature for induced labor. Also you need their signature to decide what to do with the infant after induced labor. This is a good idea. 10. Mtmm: Post By：2009-4-14 22:23:00 As long as the infant is born alive, he has the right to live. We cannot make a life disappear. However, we could make fetuses die before they are born, by means of heart puncture or so... 11. Bingyu2008: Post By：2009-4-14 22:52:00 Usually the induced labor is for the out-of-plan pregnancies. In my hospital we do induced labor under the population and family planning official documents. This is something about the population and family planning policy. This is a state policy! If the infant comes out alive after induced labor, it will violate the policy. Also if the infant's family finds out that the infant is alive, it is a failure to us, and a medical accident. If we just throw the infant alive to a trashcan and it dies there, we will be sued by its family when they see it. My point is that for induced labor, no matter how many months the infants are, we can never let infants come out alive, nor should any signs of life of the infants be shown to their families. For infants that are over 38 weeks, we need to listen to their embryocardia. If they do have embryocardia, don't tell their mothers or family members first. Instead, prepare 95% absolute alcohol to inject into the infant's fontanelle and postpone the labor [to make sure the infant is dead]. This can also protect ourselves. However, if the pregnant woman is about to give birth and already has uterine contractions when sent to hospital, there is nothing we could do. They will have to take the infant alive back home as well. 12. Fengjingduhao: 2009-4-14 23:07:00 Quote from Damohuyang's comment at 20:40pm 04-14-2009: [It is very common in my area. Over 90% of 35-week infants died under induced labor. Most of them died of skull puncture. Some were alive but if the pregnant women's family members didn't want them, they would be left in trashcans. Some of them could still live for 1-2 days.] Hey teacher! For the infants after induced labor using Ethacridine injection, even if they are still alive, they won't make it for too long will they? Isn't Ethacridine injection harmful and poisonous to infants? Thanks! 13. Wuerhe: 2009-4-15 0:43:00 I have heard that there are infants surviving from the Ethacridine injection induced labor. And they grow up in good health condition. However, after all Ethacridine is poisonous. It is not guaranteed [that the infant will survive]. 14. Nfckdf: Post By：2009-4-15 5:34:00 Quote from Wuerhe's comment at 20:43pm 04-15-2009: [I have heard that there are infants surviving from the Ethacridine injection induced labor. And they grow up in good health condition. However, after all Ethacridine is poisonous. It is not guaranteed [that the infant will survive].] Indeed, what if the infant survives but has any sequelae? Will we be sued by its family? 15. Huixinzhang: Post By：2009-4-16 20:15:00 (…) 16. Lm3850316: Post By：2009-4-26 15:37:00 I agree with Xuexia's opinion. [Xuexia’s opinion: Actually you should have punctured the fetus’ skull. By doing this there will be less damage and also you won't get an alive infant.] 17. lcx316: Post By：2009-4-28 11:24:00 I don't know why but I feel this is really cruel! 18. Naccyw: Post By：2009-4-28 16:03:00 We usually ask those pregnant women's families to sign for the agreement first. Also we learned from our teachers and chiefs: there must not be any infant born alive from induced labor. Before it is born, use a stethoscope to listen to its embryocardia. If it has embryocardia then inject absolute alcohol into the infant's fontanelle when it is being born. (…) An Eight Months’ Pregnant Woman Subjected to Forcibly Induced Labor by Population and Family Planning Office in Xianyou County, Putian City: After eight months of pregnancy, instead of a second child, Li received great torture mentally and physically because of the forcibly induced labor administered by the local PFPO. Since May when she was given forcibly induced labor, Li has been in great anguish when remembering her child. What’s worse, in the beginning of her pregnancy, the local PFPO knew and had fined her and her husband and so the child would be permitted to be born. But when the child was about to be born, it coincided with the time of a nation-wide “Severe Crackdown” on those who violated the Population and Family Planning Policy. And so the child was gone like that. Li and her husband were from the countryside and had been working outside their hometown for several years. They had aged parents and a young boy. However, the boy had some disabilities in his left hand, which made the couple worried about him. Therefore they wanted to have a second child, not only for themselves, but also to let the boy have some one to take care of him in future. In the beginning they asked the local PFPO if they could have a second child. It was not the nation-wide “Severe Crackdown” at that time so the local PFPO promised that as long as they would pay the fine, they could have another child. So Li’s family paid about $850 and their second child was granted implicit consent. And so from then on Li’s family worked hard and prepared for the birth of the child. But suddenly in this May -- after Li had been pregnant for 8 months -- they heard that because it was the time of “severe crackdown,” Li had to go back home for abortion. And their former agreement was torn up. The child must be aborted! On hearing this Li was very angry: since they had accepted the fine, how could they kill the baby now? The reply was cold-blooded and brutal: since this was an “Out of Plan” child, there was no other choice. If she refused to come back, the penalty would be razing their house in their hometown and it could also implicate their family members. (…) Since the fetus was already eight months, she could only do induced labor but not abortion. It is well known that induced labor is far more harmful for pregnant women than abortion! I have consulted experts and was told that generally abortions are not given to women who are five months pregnant or more, but induced labor. Those women who are given induced labor have uterine contractions after labor and also postpartum abdominal pain. As the uterine contractions increase, the postpartum abdominal pain increases too. Many pregnant women could not bear the pain. Sometimes it is accompanied with nausea, vomiting and cold sweats, and even fainting and shock. All these will bring severe damage to the pregnant women mentally and physically. However, the uterine curettage after induced labor is more terrible. It could lead to incomplete uterine curettage, hemorrhage, infections and infertility. What’s worse, it may lead to perforation of the uterus and intestines, which could threaten the pregnant women’s lives. Although knowing the child would be lost, and knowing the great damage that inducing labor could bring, Li and her husband returned home bitterly due to PFPO workers’ threats. They were assigned to a “hospital” which specialized in helping “illegally pregnant women” to have abortions or induced labors. “I immediately felt I was put into a prison when I came into that hospital,” said Li: “There were high walls and gates, and PFPO workers as guards following you and keeping the gates. We were just like prisoners. It was so terrible.” “Did those doctors give you any medicines or keep any record of your induced labor when you were in that hospital?” “Any record? No, neither any medicines.” Li shook her head. “That operation was just between the PFPO and the hospital. It was under the table. Other hospitals refused to do those operations (induced labor and abortion). They said it is violating medical ethics. Therefore I was sent to that hospital.” “I stayed in the hospital for three to four days. They gave me an injection with a thick needle. They just injected it into my womb like that. I could clearly feel that my baby was struggling in my womb very hard. And gradually he stopped moving. I knew that he was gone…” Li’s voice shook as she was telling the story. Her eyes were full of bitterness. Li stayed in the hospital for three days after the induced labor. The local PFPO returned her fine to her and her husband, and also gave them some financial compensation, but no paperwork or receipt. All this made Li and her husband feel that the PFPO felt guilty. Later on, Li told me that this was very common in her village. All villagers felt angry at it but dared not speak of it. Although those pregnant women violated the population and family planning policy, the things that the PFPO had done were not acceptable. (…) “My case is only a light one. I have even seen worse ones,” Li said. “Some pregnant women fled in the middle of the night just as they were about to give birth, in order to escape from those PFPO workers. But they never let those women go. They caught them on the streets and made them deliver their children there. The babies were immediately taken away after the delivery and were killed alive.” Li also mentioned an incident during her staying in that hospital. She said when she was in that hospital waiting for induction of labor, there was a woman who just had a forcibly induced labor. On the night she lost her baby, she jumped out from the fourth floor because of her bitterness over losing child. She died immediately. Her husband tried to stop her but also fell off the building. The husband didn’t die but was paralyzed. One family was destroyed like that. This happened not long ago. Li shocked me so much and that motivated me to write out this story. I never saw any happiness or joy on Li’s face, just bitterness and sorrow. Maybe it is not known that Xianyou County is one of the most impoverished counties in China. But all those PFPO workers are very rich. In the beginning they accepted fines to give Birth Permits to the “Out of Plan” children. So their population and family planning work was one of the counties in the last place in China because of too many “Out of Plan” children. And so this annoyed the city PFPC. They gave Xinayou County an absolute quota of abortions every year. All PFPO workers are required to meet the quota. Pre-marital pregnancy, seize! No Birth Permit pregnancy, seize! “Out of Plan” pregnancy, seize! All those considered violating the population and family planning policy are seized. So what do they do after seizing those pregnant women? Forcible abortions and induced labors! (…) Those PFPO workers go onto the streets and seek for any pregnant women. On seeing a pregnant woman they ask for IDs, residence certificates, marriage certificates, Birth Permits. If the pregnant women fail to provide those, then they will be given forcible induced labor too. What’s more, in order to meet the quota and keep their own position and salary, some PFPOs even proclaim that whoever provides any clues of “illegal” pregnant women, will be rewarded about $1,500! Then a question arises: where does this money come from? All the fines are supposed to be turned over to the state. PFPOs don’t have much money. So where does the money come from? Most of the young people in Xianyou County are working in other places. However, the PFPO asks them to go back home for pregnancy examinations twice a year. It is very inconvenient and costs a large amount of travel expenses. But what if they refuse to go back home? The PFPO has a way to deal with it. They seize those young people’s family members or raze down part of their houses. Because the houses and family members are still in Xianyou County in hands of the PFPO, those pregnant women are not able to escape from it even if they try to run away from Xianyou County. The PFPO has a clear command that all the “Out of Plan” pregnant women must come back for abortions or induced labor, no matter how many months they have been pregnant. If they fail to comply, the PFPO workers will go to their families with hammers and tear down the house in broad daylight, and take their family members away for detention. The PFPO has its own prisons in every town and village. They can detain people at will, from several days to several months. The citizens’ human rights are totally neglected like that. Although this kind of detention is quite common for the PFPO workers, what they are doing is against the “Population and Family Planning Law of the People's Republic of China.” In Article 39 Chapter 6 in this law it says: Any government official who violates the following rules, if the offense does not constitute a crime, the offender shall be subjected to administrative sanctions; if the case constitutes a crime, the offender shall be investigated for criminal responsibilities according to law; if there are illegal gains, the illegal gains shall be confiscated”: 1. any offence to citizens’ personal rights, property rights and other legal rights; 2. any abuses of power; 3. any demand of a bribe; 4. any corruption of family planning funds or social dependency funds; 5. any cheating on statistics of population and family planning materials. One can find out how many violations that the Xianyou County Putian City PFPO workers have violated, and how many PFPO workers have violated the rules. The law enforcers have become law violators. (…) 21 Year-old Girl and Her Fetus Died by Forcibly Induced Labor In Jingang Town, Liuyang City, Hunan Province: The 21 year-old pregnant girl Liu Dan (who didn’t get married because she wasn’t of legal marriagable age yet) may have never imagined that she and the child in her womb would die for her pregnancy. Liu Dan and her fiancé Song Qingshan were classmates in Jinshen Middle School in Jingang Town. They didn’t pursue further education but went to work because of poverty in 2005. Liu Dan went to work in a firecracker factory. Liu Dan’s hard work and brightness made very good impression on Song Qingshan. And Song Qingshan favorably impressed Liu Dan. So they began dating in 2006. Liu Dan was pregnant in 2009, but they could not get married because Liu Dan hadn’t reached the legal marriage age. She moved to Song Qingshan’s house to stay with his family. Their parents performed an engagement for them in November 17th of Chinese Traditional Calendar. A PFPO worker named Zhu Xiying often went to Song Qingshan’s house to play cards. He knew that Liu Dan was pregnant but never mentioned it. In the evening of February 26th 2009, two vans suddenly stopped before Song Huaijin’s house. A couple of people from the vans ran into Liu Dan’s room and kidnapped her before Song’s family could do anything. The vans headed towards the PFPC in Liuyang City. Liu Dan got an injection for induced abortion soon after, despite her cries. Later she was kept in a population and family planning station. Song’s family and Liu Dan’s mother arrived that night in the PFPC station. In the afternoon of the second day, Liu Dan began to have signs of child delivery: her private parts began bleeding. When Liu Dan’s family members requested to send her to hospital, the Jingang Town PFPC workers immediately denied it. They said it was normal, and they would do the induced labor for Liu Dan. But sometime before this, Dayao Hospital had already examined Liu Dan and the examination results showed that Liu Dan’s due date was March 5th and abortion could be dangerous for her because of her high blood pressure and unclear amniotic fluid. Liu Dan herself strongly refused to sign for the induced labor; neither did her and Song Qingshan’s families. But the Jingang Town PFPO chief Qi Zhiqiang proclaimed that he could sign on behalf of Jingang Town Government and he would be fully responsible if an accident happened. So Liu Dan was forcibly sent to the PFPO’s operation room. Around midnight the dead fetus was born and no one knew the fetus’ sex because none of Liu Dan’s family members was allowed to enter the room. At 3:00 a.m. Liu Dan became even weaker and bled. She bled much when doctors pushed on her belly. Sensing something was going wrong inside, Song Qingshan broke into the room and found Liu Dan was bleeding from nose, eyes, ears and mouth…… the PFPO didn’t even make emergency call until Liu Dan’s family strongly requested. As the doctors from Liuyang City hospital arrived, they immediately found that Liu Dan was in great danger and she could not afford to move to the hospital. So they gave emergency medical treatment in the room. Also they called for other equipment and doctors as a backup. But everything was too late. At about 6:00 a.m., Liu Dan shut her eyes forever after three hours of rescue efforts. Liu Dan’s brother rushed back home from Beijing on hearing this. Since he was studying in the big city and knew more than his family members, he first tried to expose this to media. But all the newspapers hung up the phone on hearing it was about the Population and Family Planning Policy. However, some kind-hearted journalist gave this information to me as well. The time I heard about this was the evening of March 3rd. On the next morning I drove to Liuyang City. To avoid conflict with the local government, I parked my news car in Dayao Town which was about 6 miles away from Jingang Town. Then I took a car to Liu Dan’s home -- Shihui Village. At that moment Liu Dan’s funeral was going on. On seeing a reporter coming, Liu Dan’s mother cried out loud and knelt down before me. She held my hands tightly and strongly asked for justice -- her young daughter could not die in vain! The official who signed for the induced labor had to pay for it! Crying could be heard all over the place. Liu Dan’s father was crying holding his daughter’s picture. The young had died before the old. Also Liu Dan’s classmates were full of tears. They said: “Liu Dan was a good girl. She liked to smile and everybody loved her.” There were several old ladies and maybe because they were a little deaf or couldn’t understand Mandarin, they said nothing but wept. Later I went to Jingang Town Government with Song Qingshan’s father. In order to avoid unnecessary trouble, I proclaimed that I was a customer of Song’s father’s firecrackers. Entering the PFPO we found that all the PFPO workers who took Liu Dan to the forcible abortion were gone, and so was the PFPO staff picture. The mayor of the town tried to persuade Song Qingshan’s mother not to pursue this accident anymore. And they promised compensation. But Song’s mother said they just wanted justice and they didn’t fear death since Liu Dan already died. I took a picture of the remaining staff pictures on the wall secretly. When I was about to leave, my car was surrounded by some Municipal administration officials. They ordered the metal door shut to stop me from leaving. I was also questioned about my intention of being there. I said I was a customer of Song’s father and was finally released by the permission of their officers. I left the place as soon as I could. (…) From what I heard: After this incident, the mayor and secretary of Jinyang came to Liuyang City PFPO. They also wept with sympathy on seeing Liu Dan’s body. On the next day the mayor and secretary came to Liu Dan’s family and later they gave Liu Dan’s family about $46,000 from the government and the PFPO ($40,000 were from the PFPO). All the PFPO workers who had participated Liu Dan’s forcible abortion ran away after the incident, and no one came to apologize for what they did to Liu and Song’s families. Liu and Song’s families were basically satisfied with the local government’s compensation. But what they wanted to see most is that Qi Zhiqiang (who signed to authorize the forcibly induced labor) could be brought to justice. He is the one who directly caused Liu Dan and her child’s death. (…) Case 7 Some Inside Facts You Might Not know About “Forcibly Induced Labor” [Editor’s Note: Including Methods of Infanticide]: It is said that over the past 20 years the Population and Family Planning has reduced the number of people in China by about 300 million. As the influence of the population boom in the 60-70s is going down, now people can see a downward tendency of the population of China. However in these 20 years it has become common that the local authorities use violent means such as tearing down houses, detaining family members and seizing property as the “flexible” “super-law” enforcement. But as outsiders, you might not know there are stories that are more terrible inside. One of my relatives is a nurse in a regular hospital. She has experienced something of the “Population and Family Planning Movement.” And so I was able to hear some stories about it. (…) But what I am going to tell is about how the PFPO workers deal with living infants after forcibly induced labor. (…)There are always some couples who prepare to have “Out of Plan” children. They use all means to hide from the PFPO examinations. So usually when they are found by PFPO workers, or reported by PFPO informants, the pregnant women are already close to giving birth. But those PFPO officials will never let them go, or they will be bad examples. But how do they deal with them? The only way is forcibly induced labor. But there are some infants born alive. Then what to do? There is no way to let the mothers take the babies and go. “It is better to have 10 more graves than one ‘out of the plan’ child.” I don’t know where this slogan came from, but it applies everywhere in China. Only a few PFPO workers will let the mothers and babies go out of sympathy, mostly they just kill the infants. There are several ways to kill the infants after forcibly induced labor. The first one is throwing the infant hard on the ground. That is, lifting the infant by his feet, and throwing him onto the ground to kill the baby. The second one is drowning. That is, dipping the infant in a bucket filled with water, and stepping on him. After some crying and bubbles, a life disappears from the world. The third one is puncturing of brain. That is, using a thick needle to puncture into the infant’s brain. This is fatal to an adult, much less an infant. One can see blood bursting out and with the mother’s heart-rending roar, an infant’s life is gone. My relative is afraid to do this. But she still had an experience. There was one time that a pregnant woman was taken to her hospital for forcibly induced labor. The infant born was still alive. My relative could not kill him. But she was surrounded with PFPO officials and she was urged to do so. My relative had to cut off the infant’s umbilical cord and some blood burst out onto the white walls. At that time the pregnant woman’s family members ran into the room and begged the PFPO officials to let them take the baby away. Maybe because of sympathy, or because they thought that the infant was dead, those officials allowed them to take it away. (…)There are two things that she can never forget, two things related to two human lives. The first one was an abortion operation on a woman, who was three months pregnant. She fought against those PFPO officials and would rather die than have the abortion. After confirming with the mayor of the village, a couple of militia soldiers were sent to the hospital. They tied her onto the operating table and the operation went on accompanied by her piercing cries. The abortion operations in China seldom use anesthetic. The woman can usually feel the scalpels going in and out of her womb. But this woman was facing something worse: if she failed to have a boy, what waited for her would not be beating up anymore but directly being abandoned by her husband. Another thing was puncturing the brain. My relative told me that some years before (actual time unknown), they didn’t kill infants born at seven or eight months. Because the infants after induced labor would be possibly alive and it was hard to explain to the outside why they still killed the infants. But now it is different. All the “Out of Plan” infants must be killed, no matter how old they are in their mothers’ wombs. There was one time in the countryside that a sevenmonth fetus was born alive after induced labor. The local government ordered the father to bury his only son alive in a grave yard. The father immediately refused. Then some militia soldiers came to force him to do so. This has made a very bad impression of the government. So now they have decided to let hospitals do this. That is, to inject alcohol into the infants’ brains. The population and family planning is bigger than laws in China. The PFPO workers are even more violent and brutal than policemen. They even beat up the family members of the pregnant women and their husbands. There was one time the parents of the “Out of Plan” pregnant woman and the parents of her husband were all detained by the local PFPO. An old parent was beaten up severely and died of this when sent home by the PFPO. This is not fiction. This is a true story that happened three to four years ago. There was no way to appeal this to the law because no court would accept this kind of case. They went to a court and were turned back. The next day they were threatened by the local government. As long as the government has to meet the population and family planning quota (that is the number of abortions in a certain area), they will and can do anything. (…) Although I am pressed for time, I still have many more “forcibly induced labor” materials to be edited. I will keep working on it. I am also one of the vulnerable groups, and I didn’t receive very much education. I am risking my life by writing this paper. I am also afraid of being banned or arrested or punished by the government. But if I don’t write out these true stories, my conscience will bother me for the rest of my life. And if I don’t write them out, I will feel guilty towards my own “Out of Plan” child. My wife and I once had an “Out of Plan” child too. But he was killed by the “Population and Family Planning Policy” before he was born. My wife and I live in guilt everyday. We do regret creating him. My paper is for all the souls of the infants killed by the “Population and Family Planning Policy.” I wish they can go to heaven and live happily ever after. Because I am not good at English, I hope there will be some kind hearted people who are good at English or other foreign languages who can translate this report into English or other languages, so that the United Nations World Conference on Women, the United Nations Special Session on Children, the United Nations' Children's Fund, and all the churches and charities can read it and call for an end of the bloody induced labors and abortions in China! I want all people with kind souls to know about those “Out of Plan” fetuses that are about to be sent to the “meat grinder.” Let us save those innocent infants! Let’s reveal more of this kind of story in China. If there is anyone who is able to translate my report into English, please send me a copy. Or send it to the International Human Rights Organization. I do wish all kind hearted people overseas can help us save those infants and their mothers. Let us work on it together! (…) The Complete Process of Forcibly Induced Labor: About the same time last year, I was pregnant with a 6-month unborn baby. My husband and I were hiding because this was our second baby and it was defined as “Out of Plan” in China. One day around noon, I went out of our rented room to buy something. At that moment there were two vans blocking me in front and from behind. About ten people jumped out of the vans. I had only heard of PFPO kidnapping people, and now it finally came to me. I didn’t resist because I knew it was useless. I was put into a van and taken to a PFPO. There was someone to register me in. I told him I wanted to see my husband. “Your family members will be informed after you get it done.” I told him I was willing to pay any amount of fines. “There are plenty of people willing to pay fines. But we too have our own quota to meet.” It was 11:30 a.m. At noon, they went out for lunch and I was locked in a room with a bathroom and a security door. And outside, there was a guard to watch me. I’ve always been a law-abiding citizen since I was born, but now I am detained because I want to be a mother. My baby in my womb kicked me softly for a while. Maybe it was her lunch time too. About five months ago, we learned that it was a girl. We chose a name for her: Yuqing. I spent two and half hours in panic. Then they took me to a hospital in the same van. The van drove into the hospital and stopped at a back door. I was put up to an examining room on the second floor. There I met a pregnant lady in the same situation as me. Her baby was maybe one or two months older than mine. Her eyes were red and swollen. There were a lot of people watching her too. I had a B mode ultrasound, cardiogram, blood test, and urine test. Five people accompanied me to the bathroom. Two females went in with me, two males were outside the bathroom, and the fifth one was outside the window -- in case I jumped out to escape. In the end I was put up in a maternity ward on the third floor. It was not a regular maternity ward, but a small room. A nurse was doing sterilization prep, and a doctor was putting on his gloves. Suddenly the pregnant lady I had met kneeled down before the doctor: “Doctor, I beg you! I beg you to let me go! My baby is a son, and he will be born in a month. My husband is the only son in his family and his father has cancer and can only live for at most a year. If I lose my son, my husband’s father will die of sorrow. I beg you. I ….” That doctor stared at her blankly and said nothing. The PFPO workers pointed at an operation table to her. She refused to comply. And then two PFPO workers took her by her hands and feet and proficiently placed her onto the bed and pressed her there. Two other workers came to help too. The doctor blocked the operation table with a screen. I didn’t look, and I didn’t want to look, because it would soon be my turn. Yuqing was very quiet in my womb. Maybe she was sleeping. After two or three minutes, the screen was removed and that pregnant lady was no longer struggling. Instead, she stared at those people who were pressing her on the table with great hatred. “You don’t fear retribution, do you?” Those people were afraid to look at her. I then was told to “take a walk to make the induced labor go faster.” I touched my daughter who was sleeping soundly in my belly and then lay down on that cold operation bed. A nurse lifted up my clothes and the doctor pushed my belly very hard to find my fetus. I had never pushed my daughter Yuqing that hard before. As the doctor found Yuqing’s head, he used a syringe filled with poison and injected it into my belly---my daughter’s head. I did not struggle, but I could clearly feel Yuqing struggling in my womb. My tears rolled down my cheeks. After that I was taken to a ward that was in terrible condition. In it there were seven beds and two pregnant women. They had also been taken here by force. “We have informed your family. They will soon be here.” After they left, I finally burst into tears. The two pregnant ladies came to comfort me: “Stop crying. This is now the reality. Save your strength for tomorrow (to expel the fetus out of womb).” I do not want to mention my husband and family’s sorrow after they came. At 4:00 p.m., the lady who had a four-month fetus began to have bellyache. We rang the bell to call for a nurse. The nurse came and said: “What are you crying for? This is just the beginning. Call me when it is the most painful.” In the beginning that lady could still talk to us from time to time. But it became more and more painful. We again rang the bell to call that nurse. “Go to the delivery room.” The nurse just stood a meter away and shouted at her. Another lady and I helped her to get off the bed and we saw her walking out slowly. I was afraid to think about this but just prayed that she could get this done as soon as possible. I also prayed that I could get this done as soon as possible, too. After two hours she came back with an even slower pace. I thought she already gave a birth. “I didn’t. They took me to an empty room where there was nobody. They told me to deliver the body of my child myself and call them after it’s done. Nobody will even know if I die in there. It was so cold inside and I called that nurse to turn on the heat. She turned on the air-conditioning and left. So I decided to have my labor here in this room.” Although we were all scared, only we ourselves could help each other now. After about 10 minutes her amniotic fluid came out. It was so painful for her that she couldn’t speak. She was twisting with pain. We helped her to take her pants off. As she was crying with great pain the baby was born. It was a very small baby and wrapped with something like a membrane. We called the nurse and she shouted at us: “Why did you do it here? You made the beds dirty and I have to clean it. Get off now!” It was almost the same for the second pregnant lady. She went to the delivery room first and then came back with anger. Her delivery was in our room too. She had hemorrhage and we called the doctor for some anti-inflammatory injection. The doctor said, “She has to pay for that and it isn’t covered by her current expense.” During the second night, I began to have bellyache. Because of what I have seen with those two ladies, I decided not to go to that “delivery room.” My husband was with me. He suggested I eat something. But I was in no mood for food. Yesterday Yuqing still had some movement in my belly. Today there wasn’t any at all. Around midnight I began to have more and more pain. I had to scratch the quilt and twist my body to ease my pain. My husband had to wipe my sweat from time to time. The pain came to me from moment to moment. Once the pain stopped, I immediately fell asleep and then was woken up by pain. At 7:00 a.m. I began to throw up. Since I didn’t eat much I had nothing to throw up but bitter water. With one time of regurgitation my amniotic fluid burst out. I sat up to ease my pain. With another regurgitation more amniotic fluid burst out and I felt my daughter was about to come out. I asked my husband to help me stand by the bed and put a plate under my feet. Soon she came out and after about ten seconds, the placenta came out too. My husband and I looked at our daughter with great sorrow. She was all black and lying there in rigidity. Then a nurse came in: “What are you doing here? Why did you give birth in this room?” Because I was struggling all night the night before, the plastic paper on the mattress was broken and the whole mattress was wet from my amniotic fluid. When I lay on bed and couldn’t move at all, a nurse came in and gave me an injection to contract my uterus. About ten minutes later, another disaster came to me. In the operation room, the doctor urged me to get onto the operation table: “Get onto the table fast. I am about to go home.” I begged her to be tender because I was too painful. “Painful? Didn’t you feel painful just then with your husband?” If it were a normal day I would have slapped her on her face, but now I totally gave up. I was afraid she would do the uterine curettage too hard on me. After the uterine curettage I was still bleeding while lying on bed. “Get up now. There are still a lot people waiting.” My husband helped me to move back to the ward. Although I had a thick sanitary napkin, the blood still leaked out from my pants. The nurse brought me Norfloxacin Capsules for 3 days and a bottle of Herba Leonuri. The next morning we checked out from the hospital and I had some anti-inflammation injections in another hospital: I don’t want to see those cold-blooded doctors and nurses anymore. My daughter Yuqing, I hope you are in heaven now. Mommy will forever miss you. Mommy didn’t do well as a mother and I will live in guilt for the rest of my life. (…) Eyewitness Account of Population and Family Planning Commission Killing a Newborn Baby in Ju County Shan Dong Province: My girlfriend was once a nurse in PFPC and I am from Ju County too. She didn’t know much about the darkness when she first came there. There was a time that a lady who was nine months’ pregnant was sent to the PFPC, and the lady was about to give birth to her child. The PFPC forcibly made the pregnant woman abort by injecting poison. However, because this fetus was already 9 months, the baby wasn’t killed by the injection. The baby was born and looked the same as other newly born babies. The only difference was that the baby cried very mournfully. The doctor told my girlfriend to find a bucket and so my girlfriend did. But she didn’t know what that was for. Then another doctor filled the bucket with water, and the first doctor put the baby into the water and drowned him. My girlfriend was too scared to say a word. When the baby was dead they took it out and threw it away. The mother was held down on the bed and didn’t see this. One can often hear PFPC proclaiming: “It is better to have one more grave than an ‘Out of Plan’ infant.” (…) The Population and Family Planning Office In Huiji District, Zhenzhou City, Henan Province Had Forcibly Induced Labor to Expel a Seven-Month Fetus: The Population and Family Planning Office in Zhenzhou City Henan Province forcibly induced labor to expel a 7-month fetus and killed the fetus. This case evoked great anger in the society after it was exposed on the internet. The victim’s mother was named Wang Liping and lived in Diaoyutai Village Guying Town Huiji District Zhenzhou City, Henan Province. She was 23 years old and was pregnant from her boyfriend before their marriage. Wang Liping was forcibly taken to the hospital by the local Population and Family Planning Office and was subjected to forcibly induced labor, which led to the death of her seven-month fetus. The victim’s statement: My name is Wang Liping, female, Han Chinese and 23 years old. I am living in Diaoyutai Village, Guying Town, Huiji District, Zhenzhou City, Henan Province. I had a boyfriend for several years and we had not completed our marriage procedures because of our poverty. In August 2007 I was pregnant by him. My family was in great joy because I am the oldest daughter in my family and this was the first time I was pregnant. My family has had no children for more than 10 years so they were all very happy and considered it very important. At around 6:00 pm on March 31, 2008, I was stopped by a couple of people on the street in Guying Town. They asked me to go with them. They told me they were from Guying Population and Family Planning Office when I asked who they were. However, they didn’t show me their badges. They wanted to take me into their car but I refused to comply. So those people beat me up and dragged me to the Guying Hospital, PLA Air Force Hospital and Litang Hospital, and asked them to do induced labor on me. But none of those hospitals was willing to do that to me. At 11:00 p.m., they took me to the Laoyachen Hospital, and forcibly induced labor on me without any examination or my signature. My seven-month unborn child was killed. At that time I was crying out loud for help and those people beat me up. They and some doctors and nurses pushed me onto the ground and took my pants off. Then they injected some medicine at my fetus’ location in my belly, and then they roped me onto a sickbed. I could not resist this and nobody came to help me. I could not imagine that this brutal and bloody behavior could happen in the civilized 21st century. When the injected medicine began to take effect, I had great pain in my belly. At 3:00 a.m., on April 2nd, my almost-fully-developed child was born. My child even mournfully cried for some minutes, and later the crying ceased. I cried out for help for a long time until a yawning nurse came and shouted at me: “No more crying!” I said: “Please take a look at my baby.” That nurse took a glance and said it was dead and then put my baby beside me. I fainted on hearing this tragic news. When I woke up in the morning, there was a doctor standing by my bed and asked for money to “get rid of the fetus’ body.” I said I had no money and so they just used a plastic bag to wrap my baby and put it beside me. I was totally crushed facing these Population and Family Planning workers, doctors and nurses who didn’t have any medical ethics or humanity. I could not imagine that I would be deprived of my human rights like this in a society ruled by law. I was not allowed contact with my family until April 3rd. During the time I lost contact with my family, my family members went to the Population and Family Planning Office asking for the legal basis of my forcibly induced labor and the death of my fetus. Those Population and Family Planning workers shouted at my family and drove my family members out of the government building. At the same time the Laoyachen Hospital again sent me a note asking for payment. The lady lying on the bed is Wang Liping, and the dead fetus lying in the plastic bag was her child. [Visual evidence of this is found in pages 28, 29,30 of the document] (…) The Legal Murder of Infants Wuhan Huangpi Population and Family Planning Service Station Killed an “Out of Plan” Male Infant in Public: This is a true story. The innocent child would never know that he revealed a real massacre in the civilized 21st century to the international community at the expense of his life. It is called the “Huangpi Incident.” It was widely reported by international media. When questioned by a journalist from “The Times,” the national Population and Family Planning Committee chief Zhang Weiqing unabashedly said this was just an “individual case.” But it is known by all people that this kind of case exists all over China. On August 15th 2000, the workers in PFPC in Caidian Village, Huangpi District, Wuhan City, first threw an “Out of Plan” baby (found by an old lady in a toilet) onto the ground, then kicked the baby with their feet, and in the end they drowned the baby in a paddy field. This evoked great anger among the local citizens. In the morning of the 16th, many citizens in Caidian Village called the newspaper to report this murder. They said that they knew that baby was an “Out of Plan” child, but it was totally a crime to brutally kill this little life. In the morning of the 16th, a reporter went to Caidian Village in Huangpi District, and Liu Juyu, the old lady who found and meant to save the child, told the whole story. At 5:00 p.m. on August 15th, Liu Juyu heard from her neighbors that there was a baby crying behind the village financial department. As a retired doctor, Liu Juyu hurried to the toilet and found a child dipped in feces. Liu Juyu immediately dragged him out and washed him. She took the baby to a clinic and cut off his umbilical cord and gave him an injection of antibiotics. After all the treatment, Liu Juyu wrapped the baby and gave him some water to drink. At that moment, 5 PFPO workers came to Liu Juyu and snatched the baby from her and threw the baby on the ground. According to Liu Juyu’s daughter, the baby twitched his arms and legs because of the severe pain. But this was just the beginning. One PFPO worker then kicked the baby very hard with his feet. After that, a couple of people took the baby away, and the baby’s crying could still be heard from far away. According to the villagers, those PFPO workers took the baby to a paddy field and drowned him there. Mentioning the child, Liu Juyu’s heart still wrenched very much. She said the baby was very lovely, white and chubby. He could even drink himself after medical treatment. Liu Juyu said the PFPO was much too brutal: even if the child was “out of the plan,” he could have been sent to the orphanage. Why did they have to kill him? According to investigations, this baby was the child of villager Huang Qiusheng. In the morning of the 15th, the PFPO workers took his wife, who was 9 months pregnant, to a PFPO operation room and gave her an injection to induce labor. In the afternoon the baby was born but that injection failed to kill the baby. Seeing this, the PFPO workers told Huang’s wife to throw the baby away. And then Liu Juyu found the baby in the toilet. Huang Yuansheng (Huang Qiusheng’s brother) said, his brother didn’t want more children, but he could not afford the cost of a sterilization operation. So he had to let it be. This evoked great anger among the villagers. They said: “We know that it was illegal to have ‘out of the plan’ children, but the baby was killed alive! We have many ‘out of the plan’ children in our village but you can keep them as long as you pay the fines.” This pathetic baby’s short life was full of torture. He was abandoned in a toilet, and was killed after being saved by Liu Juyu. I do believe anyone who still has a conscience will shed tears for him. And this kind of murder of infants has been carried out numerous times in China. Did those infants commit any crime that they should be punished like this by the ruling class? “It is better to have 10 more graves, than to have one ‘out of the plan’ child.” This horrible slogan produces more bloody incidents. In the hometown of Lu Xun (a very famous Chinese writer), Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province, a newly born baby was killed by piercing his head with scissors, only because his mother didn’t have a “Birth Permit.” In Chen Zhou, Hunan Province, 2 brothers’ houses were exploded by the government because one of them had an “Out of Plan” child. The village PFPO slogan was: “Houses will be razed if you refuse tubal ligation; cattle will be seized if you refuse abortion; nobody cares if you want to protest by suicide; it is better to have people die than to have ‘out of the plan’ children.” . . ..Even in the animal kingdom, which obeys the law of the jungle, it is unheard of for young animals to be killed for the better survival of herd. However, there are some Chinese enthusing about killing their own people’s infants for some reason. Those infant-killers proclaim themselves as the representatives of advanced culture. (The Chinese Communist Party claims it always represents “the development trend of China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people”). It makes all 1.3 billion Chinese people live under this infant-killing culture. If the PFPO officials cannot meet their quotas (to have a certain number of abortions), then they are docked 50% of their salaries. Many of those communist officials’ political positions and profits are based on the massacre of infants. This is typical tyranny. Now let’s take a look at the local authority’s response about the “Huangpi Incident”: (…) “Now the high technology has entered the population and family planning field. The ‘Huangpi Incident’ was known by the whole world in just one day. And the Chinese government was questioned by the international community. This has taught us that the globalization of information cannot be stopped. We cannot continue using an ostrich policy anymore. It is naive to believe that the outside world won’t know if we keep our secrets. Therefore, we must find ways to do population and family planning work in an open environment. This is a historic task for all of us.” . . . (…) 1994 Beijing Jianguomen Tian Mingjian Incident: On September 21st 1994, many Canadian TV stations broadcast a live video of a gunfight near the embassy area in Beijing Jianguomen. It could be seen that an Iranian diplomat and his nine year old son were killed in the gunfight; a yellow taxi’s windshield was smashed; a bus was full of bullet holes, the wounded children of the Iranian diplomat were still crying out loud in the car; police were all over with guns; medics were saving injured people while gun shots could still be heard. The Chinese government immediately shut down the satellite broadcasting and no reporters or journalists were allowed to do interviews. The reason the Canadian TV stations still had live broadcast was because the gunfight was right under their department. They had estimated that Chinese government may block all broadcasts so Canadian reporters made this live broadcast before it was banned. All Chinese media were ordered to be silent except Beijing Evening Newspaper published a one-hundred-word article with gunfight news authorized by Xinhua News Agency (The official news agency of Chinese government). This caused Beijing Evening Newspaper to be very hot and the price went up to 50 times its original price. Even now citizens in Beijing should still remember this incident. This internationally famous criminal was a People's Liberation Army First Lieutenant, who was 30 years old. He was from the countryside in Henan Province and an excellent soldier, especially his marksmanship. He was once recommended for study in Xi’an Army College for further education. He was highly recognized by his superiors when he was a staff in the regimental command. His gun shot incident was caused by the forcibly induced labor to his wife. He and his wife had a daughter at that time. Since he was from the countryside, and just like most country people, he always wanted to have a son. But because of the strict population and family planning policy, he didn’t tell the army that his wife was pregnant again. But his regiment finally knew this by secretly checking his mail. And then the regiment informed the local PFPO, and his wife was forcibly taken to the hospital to have an abortion. However, because his wife had been pregnant for seven months, the forcibly induced labor caused medical malpractice, and his wife and child (later it was confirmed that it was a boy) both died in the hospital. On knowing this Tian Mingjian was totally despairing. He decided to take revenge on society. On the night of September 19th, he treated the arms storehouse keeper to dinner, and borrowed the storehouse key from the keeper. Later he took a type 81 assault rifle and six magazines of bullets. Then he hid the rifle under a chair in the reviewing stand. He also told some of his soldier friends who were from the same village to drop down on hearing “Hit the ground!” the next day. (After the incident his friends were punished because of failing to report this information.) On the morning of September 20th, he was waiting by the reviewing stand when troops were doing exercises. At the moment Tian Mingjian saw the regiment political commissar on the field, he began to shoot immediately after shouting “Hit the ground!” Four people and the political commissar were killed instantly and more than 10 people were injured. The whole camp was in chaos. Tian Mingjian then ran to the highway and hijacked a jeep heading directly toward Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The jeep met a red light at Jianguomen and the driver drove the jeep to hit a tree and fled. Tian Mingjian shot him in the back. Then Tian Mingjian shot a yellow taxi and its driver. Then Tian Mingjiang began to shoot people at random and riddle cars and buses passing by. The special police soon arrived and began gun fights with him. Although there were many armed special police, Tian Mingjian held them back with his military skills and excellent marksmanship. At that time a 44 bus was passing by and the driver was so scared that he stopped the bus in the middle of the road. And so the bus was riddled by bullets and 17 people were killed. Among them were bicycle riders and Iranian diplomat Yousef Mohammadi Pishknari and his son. Dozens were injured on his trail towards Jianguomen, while police desperately tried to apprehend him. Tian Mingjian excellently demonstrated his military skills in the gun fight. He lowered his body and took advantage of the surroundings and kept calm facing the police. It was clear that a field army soldier’s military skills and discipline were much higher than regular police. Those regular police were all hiding behind the soldiers in the gunfight. The anti-riot squad and policemen were communicating using uncoded signals and so they were even more suppressed by Tian Mingjian. There was a policeman named Cao Fukun, who underestimated Tian Mingjian’s military skills, and popped up his head to search for Tian Mingjian’s location. Tian Mingjian once again proved his marksmanship. Cao Fukun was shot in the head and the bullet penetrated his helmet and killed him instantly. However, Tian Mingjian just wanted revenge on society and didn’t do much planning. So after the gunfight he was besieged at Yabao Road and his bullets were running out. Heavy police fire forced him to flee into a dead end, where he was killed from behind by a sniper who was from his camp. After this incident, his regiment was deactivated in 1996. (…) Case 16: My name is Li Ying (penname). I was born and grew up at Lin Yi city in Shandong Province, Mainland China, which is also the hometown of the famous blind activist, Mr. Chen Guangcheng, who is imprisoned in China right now. I have experienced forced abortions three times over my life time. The last time took place in 1981, when I was 40 years old. It was also the worst abortion experience not only because I was getting old, but more importantly because I was seven months pregnant. I will never forget that black week. I had been hiding my pregnancy from the family planning officials until I was seven months pregnant with my baby. Somehow, the family planning officials in my hometown became aware of my pregnancy and started hunting me all over. So, I had to escape to my mother’s home, which was one hour away from my home. But the family planning officials ran after me and eventually caught me in my mom’s home. My parents were in their 60’s. They were scared to death when they saw so many family planning officials run into their small one bedroom house. My mother cried and begged them to let me go. But they pushed my mom away mercilessly and dragged me to the hospital immediately. When I arrived at the hospital, I saw that the hospital was full of pregnant women waiting for forced abortions. Many of them were crying. From time to time, I heard painful screaming and groaning voices. I was so scared that I hardly could move my legs. But the family planning officials, doctors and nurses dragged me into the surgery room. I was forced to lie down on a bed. One nurse took off my clothes. Then the doctor used her hand to touch my lower abdomen, trying to find the head of my baby. Then she asked another nurse to give her the syringe when she found my baby’s head. With one hand on my lower abdomen, she began to inject all the medicine into the head of my baby with her another hand. I could feel that my baby suddenly moved in my womb when the injection occurred. Immediately I cried out and begged them “Please do not kill my baby. She is innocent. Please let me go…” Ferociously, they yelled at me, “Family planning is our national policy. You cannot keep this baby since you do not have a birth permit. You are totally breaking China’s law if you have this baby.” Crying, screaming, depressed and despairing, I was moved out of the surgery room and pushed into another room where five more women were also crying with groaning voices. I touched my womb and felt my baby was still moving. I cried and murmured to my baby “I am sorry, my baby! I am sorry you are going to die in my body. As your mom, I am sorry that I could not protect you. I could not protect your life even in front of my eyes. I have to watch you be killed inside of me. I am sorry my baby. Maybe in our next generation, I can make it up to you…” About two hours later, I no longer felt my baby move. I knew she was dead already. I was so despairing that I really wanted to commit suicide. As a mother, I was so ashamed that I let my baby die inside of my body and I could not do anything about it. During the next three days, with terrible pain in my womb and in my heart, I did not want to talk to anyone, not even to my husband. Hardly did I eat anything. I just missed my baby in my womb. In the afternoon of the third day after the injection of the medicine, I saw quite a lot of blood flow out of my birth canal and called the nurses. Immediately they placed a big plastic bucket at one side of my bed. They told me then that “your baby is going to be delivered. Be prepared and put your dead baby into this plastic bucket…” With my eyes full of tears, I saw that my baby was carried away by the nurse. Later on, I was told that it was a beautiful girl. She was taken away by the nurse and was dumped into a huge garbage pit beside the crematorium, which was specifically established for the aborted babies. This garbage pit is still there today and tens of thousands of aborted babies are still buried there. The number of the aborted babies buried over there is increasing every day if they are not being made by some crazy doctors as Baby Soup for some corrupted government officials and cruel wealthy people. Over the following couple of days, a lot of blood still flowed out of my birth canal. Plus, doctors did the surgery of dilation and curettage twice to take out my placenta without success. This caused a terrible hemorrhage. However, there was not enough blood stored in the hospital, as many women had the similar abortions. So I could not get a proper blood transfusion. I became very weak physically and was almost dying. After one week in the hospital, my family took me back to my own home. Since I lost too much blood during the forced abortion, very often I experienced vertigo. And hardly could I do any heavy farm work. This situation lasted for over six months. Physically, my body got recovered after about 6 months, but psychologically, never!!! Thank God that I am a Christian now. Spiritually, I got healed by God. I know one day I am going to meet all of my aborted children in heaven. And I also pray for the hundreds of millions of forced aborted children in China. They all will be with God in Heaven. Specifically, I pray for Chinese government to abolish the One Child Policy and forced abortion in China. May the children of God rejoice in China one day. Final word: In 2008, there are about one million people in my small county in Lin Yi city, but there were total over 7000 late term (over 6 months) forced abortions, which means over 7000 mothers are suffering right now. What about the whole China! Millions of them and only God knows the exact number! May God help us to stop this inhuman crime in China!”HEARING BEFORE THE US COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 14, 2004 - CHINA: HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND COERCION IN ONE-CHILD POLICY ENFORCEMENT: “Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. (…) Today, the Committee on International Relations is meeting to examine the appalling issue of the continued and systematic use of coercion by the People’s Republic of China in the implementation of its one-child-per-couple policy. In particular, we will hear testimony about the deplorable case of Mao Hengfeng, a victim of forced abortion whose ongoing attempts to receive justice have resulted in her sentencing to 18 months of hard labor during which she has been tortured, denied vitally-needed medicine, and whose life is in danger today. Some of you may be wondering why this hearing is being held at this time when the 108th Congress has adjourned and the 109th Congress has yet to be sworn in. Fighting for human rights is almost always difficult, and it is certainly always inconvenient, and nowhere is it more inconvenient than when dealing with the Peoples Republic of China. Rocking the boat could be bad for the bottom line and may upset international relationships. Thus, business and international interests may apply pressure to pretend that there are no or few human rights violations in China. Unfortunately, however, the Communists in China do not take time off from their abuse and persecution, and they certainly don’t do it for the holidays. Beijing party leaders do not give local officials a pass from fulfilling their population and family planning quotas, euphemism for forced IUD insertion, forced sterilization and forced abortion. In fact, the torture of Mao Hengfeng demonstrates that China’s drive to control its population growth at any cost to the Chinese people is as strong and as dangerous as ever. A leading activist in Shanghai, Mrs. Mao’s troubles began with the Chinese Government in the late 1980s when she was pregnant for the second time. She petitioned her work unit for larger housing, which she was refused. Despite a hunger strike in protest by Mrs. Mao, she was confined to a psychiatric facility for 6 days in February 1989, during which she was administered drugs designed to induce an abortion, which nevertheless failed. The following month, in March 1989, she was dismissed from her job for missing too many days of work, after which she was sued for wrongful dismissal and won but lost on appeal. Mao’s legal battles continued during which she became pregnant a third time. Told by the presiding judge that he would rule in her favor if she had an abortion, her child was aborted in October 1990. But the court, nevertheless, rejected her claims. Another protest by Mrs. Mao resulted in another month-long psychiatric confinement where Mrs. Mao reported she was suspended in an inverted position and beaten. Continuing her court battles for the next decade, Mrs. Mao staged protests in front of the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Peoples Court in May and October 2003 after a lower court rejected her suit for no payment of a fee, even though a fee waiver request was included in the papers transferred from the higher court. In early 2004, Mrs. Mao, along with thousands of other petitioners, brought their cases to the attention of party leaders at the National Peoples Congress in Beijing. Upon her return, she was arrested and sentenced to 18 months of reeducation through labor for ‘‘disturbance of the peace,’’ as they call it, for allegedly scratching and tearing the uniforms of court personnel during the May and October protests. In reeducation through labor, credible sources report that in August she was beaten, and that camp police have bound Mao’s wrists and ankles with leather straps and pulled her limbs apart for a period of 2 days to force Mrs. Mao to acknowledge wrongdoing. On November 19, she lost an appeal in a Shanghai court to receive welfare payments, but was seen with blood blisters and swelling around her wrists and ankles indicating ongoing abuse. More recently, family members reported that she is being force-fed by an unidentified medicine which turns her mouth black, that she is held for hours in restraints, and that she is incarcerated with two narcotic offenders who are reportedly free to abuse her. Her blood pressure is dangerously high, but she refuses to take medicine for fear of being given psychiatric drugs. Multiple independent sources confirm that the reports of Mrs. Mao’s mistreatment are not exaggerated. Mrs. Mao’s case has raised concern even in China where access to information is difficult. Dozens of people have come forward to openly support her, and protests against her treatment led to the adjournment of an October 28 hearing in Yangpu district to consider further administrative action against her. Mrs. Mao clearly is the most egregious and most recent example of China’s mistreatment of women who do not comply with China’s Draconian policies, but there are thousands and thousands of other victims. As a matter of fact, other victims have personally told me, on trips to China, of their horrific stories about the Chinese one-child-per-couple policies. At one religious freedom meeting in China in the 1990s, I asked what the participants knew about forced abortion policies. All three women in the group broke down in tears as they shared with me how they all had been forced to have abortions. One woman talked about how she thought God was going to protect her baby but that she was not able to escape the abortion. Other women who have gained asylum in the United States because of China’s coercive population control program have told me and this Committee terrible stories of crippling fines, the so-called social compensation fee, which Assistant Secretary Dewey will speak about today, that is up to 10 times the household income. That means father and mother, husband and wife, are forced to pay up to 10 times. That Draconian fine is the linchpin of the coercive population control program. Because if you can’t live, if you can’t get housing, if you can’t have a wage that at least is somewhat liveable and you are fined up to 10 times your salary, how do you exist? So that becomes, again, the means by which the coercion is carried out. Other women who have gained asylum have stood here and told similar stories in the past. I will never forget one testimony from a woman who told how she had found an abandoned baby girl, picked up this abandoned baby girl, only to find that the family planning cadres knocked on her door and said, you now have to abort the baby that you are carrying. She was the good Samaritan, taking care of an abandoned girl and making that girl her own, only to be sanctioned by the population control police and forced to have an abortion. She finally got asylum here in the United States. According to the most recent State Department Human Rights Report, one consequence that has been largely overlooked by the press and by many people has been the impact on women’s mental health. According to the State Department report, the country’s birth limitation policies have caused an upwards of 500 suicides by women each and every day. Five hundred women who take their lives every day because they see no way out and are dealing with such crippling pain and agony as a result of this coercive population control program. As a matter of fact, the report points out that 56 percent of the world’s female suicides occur in the Peoples Republic of China. We also heard some years back—my good friend and colleague, Mr. Lantos, will remember this—from Mrs. Gao Xiao Duan, a former administrator of the Chinese planned birth control policy. She said, and I quote her briefly, ‘‘Once I found a woman who was 9 months pregnant but did not have a birth allowed certificate. According to the policy, she was forced to undergo an abortion surgery. In the operation room I saw how the aborted child’s lips were sucking, how its limbs were stretching. A physician injected poison into its skull, and the child died, and it was thrown into the trash can. I was a monster,’’ she went on to say, ‘‘in the daytime, injuring others by the Chinese communist authorities’ barbaric planned-birth policy, but in the evening, I was like all other women and mothers enjoying my life with my children.’’ As she sat right where our Assistant Secretaries are sitting, she went on to say, ‘‘To all of those injured women, to all those children who were killed, I want to repent and say sincerely that I am sorry!’’ Mrs. Gao has been joined by a rising chorus of government and human rights organizations crying out against these crimes against humanity. (…) Let me also point out that missing from the line up, and it is an impressive and growing line up of people who are speaking out against forced abortion in China is the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). I would point out to my colleagues that since 1979, the UNFPA has been the chief apologist and cheerleader for China’s coercive onechild-per-couple policy. That is on the record. That is indisputable. Despite numerous credible forced abortion reports throughout the last 30 years from impeccable sources, including human rights organizations like Amnesty International and others, they have continued to say that this policy is voluntary. The former Executive Director of the UNFPA, Nafis Sadik said, and I quote her because in these words, the statements speak for themselves. She said, ‘‘China has every reason to feel proud and pleased with its remarkable achievements made in its family planning policy. The country could offer its experiences and special expert help to help other countries.’’ God forbid that happen, that other countries pick up on this onechild-per-couple policy with its reliance on coercion. And Sven Burmester, UNFPA’s man in Beijing gushed over China’s achievements and said, in strictly quantitative terms, it is the most successful family planning policy ever developed. Of course it works. Coercion always works. Make no mistake about it, my friends and colleagues, China covets UNFPA’s financial and verbal support for its program, and it certainly is tantamount to a white-washing of these human rights violations. (…)On July 15 of this year, Secretary of State Colin Powell summarized the UNFPA problem in a letter to Chairman Hyde, and he said, and I quote, ‘‘China continues to employ coercion in its birth planning program, including through severe penalties for ‘out-of-plan births,’ and UNFPA’s program has not been reconstructed to solve the problems identified in 2002.’’ The State Department’s accompanying report details these coercive measures, many of which Mao Hengfeng is now living out. The country’s population control policy relied on education propaganda, economic incentives as well as on more coercive measures, such as the threat of job loss or demotion and social compensation fees. Secretary of State Colin Powell went on to say reliable sources reported that fees ranged to up to 8 times, and now we hear that the number is as much as 10 times the disposable income. Additional disciplinary measures include the withholding of social services, higher tuition costs when the child goes to school, job loss or demotion, loss of promotion of opportunity, expulsion from the party and the destruction of homes. Examples abound. The L.A. Times reported just last month that a couple in Jiangxi province complained that local officials destroyed their home after they were unable pay a fine of about $2,000, because their daughter broke the one-child-per-couple policy. Let me also point out to my colleagues that there are numerous Chinese sources which indicate that coercion is getting worse in China. (…)Let me point out that there is also the issue of the disparity, the missing girls in China. We are finding this increasingly, and social scientists are speaking to it that men in China cannot find their wives because they are missing. They have been killed because of this one-child-per-couple policy. After 25 years of coercive central family planning, this is now beginning to show. In the last census in 2000, there were nearly 19 million more boys than girls in the 0 to 15 age group. And the ratio in many of the provinces show a profound disproportionate number of boys vis-a-vis little girls. For example, one population researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhang Qing, said that only 7 of China’s 29 provinces are within the world’s average sex ratio, with 8 disaster provinces from north to south where there were 26 of 38 percent more boys than girls. And that obviously is a disaster that will lead to more sex slavery, more bride selling, more human trafficking and we have already seen the beginning of that. (…)Mr. LANTOS. (…) Mr. Chairman, as we meet here today, a brave Chinese woman who dares to stand up for her beliefs is being held behind bars at a so-called reeducation through labor camp near Shanghai. Periodically, Mao Hengfeng, a mother of two children under the age of 18, is taken from her cell to be tortured. Ms. Mao’s jailers have a simple goal. They want to force her to end her campaign to expose the evil underbelly of China’s one-child policy, the use of forced abortion and coercive family planning practices to limit population growth. Mr. Chairman, we do not usually conduct hearings when Congress is out of session. But the urgency of this human rights case and the continuing incidence of forced abortion in China demands our attention today. (…)Mr. Chairman, the case that sparked today’s hearing is unfortunately not that unusual. Ms. Mao, a former factory worker in Shanghai, simply wanted to have a third child. The local authorities promised her that she would retain her job if she had an abortion. She had the abortion, only to be immediately fired from her position. Ever since, Ms. Mao has courageously fought her dismissal through the courts, a persistence which has now landed her in prison. My message to the Government of China is simple: Stop the torture of Mao Hengfeng and let her return home to her family. (…)China’s use of forced abortion and coercive family practices denies Chinese women their most basic of human rights: The right to decide their reproductive futures. Chinese families should not be charged so-called ‘‘social compensation fees’’ which can bankrupt them simply because they choose to have another child. And women who get pregnant should not be forced to have an abortion against their will. According to the State Department’s Human Rights Report, the incidents of forced abortion in China has been declining. But the Government proudly trumpets the penalties it imposes on families who choose to have more than one child, including fees which are 8 times a family’s annual income. Think about this: Average annual incomes in this country are in the $40,000 range. This would be a penalty of over $300,000 for having a child in an American family above a prescribed quota, an incomprehensible and insane policy. Local officials also charge exorbitantly high tuition fees for so-called unapproved children to deny them their basic social services. Their parents may find themselves out of a job as well. (…) Mr. TANCREDO. (…) I fail to understand the difference between the situations in Rwanda or the Sudan or a variety of other places where governments are making war on their own people. Governments are killing their own people by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, in this case, by the millions. I fail to understand, Mr. Chairman, the difference between the actions taken by those governments and the actions taken by the People’s Republic of China, the Government of the Peoples Republic of China against their own people because I believe this to be a war on their own people. (…)I think that those are actions that a country guided by the kind of moral principles that we say we are guided by would take against any country that has so blatantly and horrendously conducted a war on their own people and killed millions. Because in my mind, and I know in your mind, Mr. Chairman, just because it has not moved out of the womb does not mean it is not a person. It is a person, and they have killed them by the millions. What’s the difference? I find none. (…) STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL G. KOZAK, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE. (…)In 2004, serious human rights abuses continued in China. These included torture, mistreatment of prisoners, incommunicado detention and the denial of due process. Authorities remain quick to suppress religious, political, or sources groups that they perceive as threatening to Government authority or to national stability. Often they detained those seeking to exercise their fundamental freedoms on State secret charges. The Government used the international war on terror as a justification for cracking down on Uighur Muslims, including those who peacefully expressed dissent. They also repressed independent Muslim religious leaders. Tight restrictions on freedom of speech and press continued, and the Government increased its efforts to monitor and control use of the Internet. I think we saw some cases in the paper this morning, actually, of people who have been publishing on the Internet and paid a price for it. The Government severely restricted freedom of assembly and association and increased the repression of people of unregistered religious groups in some part of the country. The crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners continued. Violence against women continued to be a problem, including the imposition of a coercive birth limitation policy that resulted in instances of forced abortion and forced sterilization. (…)It is coercive family planning policies, the abuse of administrative detention, particularly the continued use of reeducation through labor, forced incarceration of citizens in psychiatric hospitals and the use of torture to force detainees to confess alleged crimes or to recant their beliefs. (…) Chinese citizens are sentenced up to 3 years in prison-like facilities or institutions, with no judicial oversight, often for peaceful political or religious activities. Allegations of mistreatment and torture in these facilities are all too common. Unfortunately, China has found its extensive administrative justice system a convenient mechanism with which to control dissidents and activists. The figures of the number of people incarcerated for reeducation through labor bear this out. In the early 1990s, 150,000 persons were in reeducation through labor camps. In the period 2001 to 2003, the number was 310,000. According to some estimates, over 100,000 Falun Gong are also serving reeducation through labor sentences. (…) Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. (…) I would like to introduce the second panel, beginning with Harry Wu, Executive Director, Laogai Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization committed to documenting the Laogai system and other systemic human rights abuses, and the China Information Center which manages Chinese language news and commentary Web sites for mainland China readers. As a young student, Mr. Wu was arrested and sent to the Laogai, the Chinese Gulag, as a ‘‘counterrevolutionary rightist.’’ He was imprisoned for 19 years, subjected to beatings, torture, and in 1985, Wu came to the United States as a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Wu has since made several trips to China to document human rights abuses and was again arrested by the Chinese Government in 1995 and sentenced to 15 years for ‘‘stealing State secrets.’’ After 66 days and extensive international pressure, including a hearing we held on his behalf here in this room, he was expelled from China. Since his release, he has continued to travel the world to tell of the abuses of the Chinese Government that they inflict on their own people. (…) STATEMENT OF HARRY WU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LAOGAI RESEARCH FOUNDATION. Mr. WU. (…)The one-child policy is the most pervasive source of human rights violations in China today. It affects every family, every woman. Family planning, in the true sense of the word, should be encouraged the way that family planning is universally accepted throughout the international community. Its concept, defined in the United Nations Declaration, is that husbands, wives, and individuals freely and consensually decide how many children they wish to have and at what spacing. But, in contrast, the family planning in force in China is actually a State-controlled mechanism of the reproduction of children. The family planning carried out as a State policy by the Chinese Communist Party is Government planning, not planning by the individual. It is not freely decided upon by the individual family. Anyone in China who does not follow the Government plan is in violation of the law. In Mainland China, so-called illegal pregnancies, illegal births, exceeding the number of children allowed and so on, is prohibited and suppressed in the same way as are thieves, drug smugglers, and murderers. (…)Despite recent supposed reforms, China’s population policy still does not conform to UN principles. The one-child policy is the most pervasive source of human rights violations in China today. It affects every family, every woman. With few exceptions, only married couples that obtain advance approval, i.e. a birth permit, may legally have a child, even if it is their first child. A majority of Chinese women are required to use intrauterine devices (IUDs). Violators, if discovered to be pregnant, are coerced into having an abortion. Most violators of the one-child policy are forced to undergo sterilization. Doctors who do not perform IUD insertion or sterilization, or who fake these operations, are jailed. Family members of violators are often jailed if they do not reveal the violator’s whereabouts. Despite relaxation of certain aspects of China’s family planning regulations, enforcement of the one-child policy continues to be coercive. (…) Coercion in China’s family planning policy is not sporadic or unauthorized, but rather an essential tool used by family planning cadres to meet ambitious targets. Coercion is systemic, widespread, and appalling. As international law clearly stipulates, the right of families to choose the number and spacing of their children is clear and inviolable, and this right is clearly denied to Chinese citizens. As long as China’s one-child policy remains in place, women in China will continue to lack control over their own bodies and their own reproductive choices, and the state will continue to dictate when they will be fitted with IUD devices, sterilized, or forced to have an abortion. (…) STATEMENT OF MA DONGFANG, VICTIM OF CHINA’S ONECHILD POLICY: My name is Dongfang Ma. I was born in China and got married in 1986. In 1988, I gave birth to my first child, and I was required to get a certificate for having only one child under China’s one-child policy. In 1991 I became pregnant again, and I was forced to abort this child, like many other Chinese women who got pregnant with their second child, because it was a violation of Chinese Government policy. After the abortion, the doctor inserted an IUD device into my uterus without either my knowledge or permission. I soon became very sick as a result of the IUD and endured months of horrible pain and discomfort. I suffered from excessive bleeding, weight loss and fatigue, so I begged the doctors to remove the device, but they refused to do so. If they had it removed, they would be breaking the law. My body just could not tolerate the device. Instead, they inserted a Norplant into my left arm. The Norplant proved to be no less distressing. It gave me night sweats, anxiety, and depression. I did not have my menstrual cycle for over 10 months. Again, I begged the doctors to remove the Norplant, not because I intended to have another child, but because I was suffering so much. Bound by Chinese law, and fearful of the consequences, the doctors refused. If I had found some way of removing it myself, I would have lost my job and possibly would have had to undergo a forced sterilization or reinsertion. I was forced to make self-criticisms several times before I had the abortion. After I came to the United States in 1998, an American doctor helped remove the device that was causing so much harm to my health. This is the device from my left arm. Six little tubes. I was granted asylum over here, and I now live peacefully with my husband and my only child as a permanent resident. The right to give birth is fundamental. It is recognized in article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I support the idea that women should be involved in their own family planning. I condemn any governmental policy that results in physical pain, infanticide, and emotional torture. To punish a woman and her family for unplanned pregnancies is an unspeakable cruelty. There are so many stories like mine in China, and so many women wish to escape the one-child policy; however, they cannot come to the United States to seek asylum. So this policy must change so that women may live in China without constant anxiety and a fear for their own bodies. HEARING BEFORE THE CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION, FEBRUARY 3, 2016: “Chairman SMITH. (…) The global crisis of missing girls constitutes a gross human rights abuse—which is aptly described as gendercide—the extermination of the girl child in society simply because she happens to be a girl. For most of us, the statement ‘‘it’s a girl’’ is cause for enormous joy, happiness, and celebration. But in many countries, and even in some parts of the United States—it can be a death sentence. In China and India alone, an estimated three girls are aborted every minute simply because she is a girl. Gendercide is not only a predictable tragedy of lost potential, but also a demographic timebomb, particularly in China, with social, political, and potentially even security implications. (…) STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT PITTENGER, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NORTH CAROLINA: The Chinese Government has shown a blatant disregard for the basic human rights of women. This egregious attitude has magnified the underlying preferences of the traditional patriarchal Chinese society through birth control policies and propaganda resulting in a society set against women and responsible for the systemic killings of millions of baby girls annually through abortion and infanticide. (…) STATEMENT OF CHAI LING, FOUNDER, ALL GIRLS ALLOWED: (…) [O]n October 29, 2015, China indeed declared the ending of the most brutal one-child policy. It is something that has been ongoing for 35 years and killed over 400 million babies. (…) As many of you have mentioned, China indeed has a massive gendercide going on, coincided with the brutal enforcement of the one-child policy. The most obvious thing is for every sixth girl that was supposed to be born, number six would be killed. The number six boys were growing up without wives to marry. So China today has, reportedly, 37 million men that will not have wives to marry. There are massive consequences for these kinds of gendercide issues. There are links to increased sex trafficking, rape, prostitution, and overall crimes. China alone conducts 60 percent of the worldwide sex trafficking. (…) So this is not just the war against young baby girls. It is a war against humanity. (…)In China, gendercide has two causes. The government’s population control policy and the people’s bias and actions both contribute to conducting gendercide. (…) I want to say that the data has shown there is a steady rise of the gender imbalance along with China’s implementation of the one-child policy. So in 1979, right at the beginning of the one-child policy, the ratio between boys and girls is 106 to 100. By 1988, it rose to 111 boys born to every 100 girls. By 2001, it reached up to 117 boys versus 100 girls. By 2010—I think 2012, it reached up to 119 to 100. (…) The second area of gendercide took place during China’s massive industrialization. Over 270 million workers are moving off of the farm and going to various cities. By doing so, they left their wives and their children behind. Today China has 61 million ‘‘left-behind’’ children. These kids tend to suffer very low self-esteem and many girls suffer physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, potentially. (…) STATEMENT OF MARA HVISTENDAHL, CONTRIBUTING CORRESPONDENT FOR SCIENCE MAGAZINE AND AUTHOR OF ‘‘AND THE CITY SWALLOWED THEM’’ AND ‘‘UNNATURAL SELECTION: CHOOSING BOYS OVER GIRLS, AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF A WORLD FULL OF MEN’’: (…) We are all here because we care about the world’s women. I appear before you as well as a journalist who spent nearly a decade in China reporting on various issues. I spent three years of that time investigating the disappearance of nearly 100 million women from the global population. As I detailed in my book, ‘‘Unnatural Selection,’’ sex-selective abortion and other forms of sex selection have spread beyond China and India and into countries as varied as Albania, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, as well as to some groups in the United States and Canada. China is the world leader when it comes to sex selection, but it has some factors in common with these other countries, and I will explain what those are. (…) Unfortunately in 2016, sexism is far from dead. A preference for boys still exists in many parts of the world. Combine that with economic development, which means that just as people are moving to cities, new technologies like ultrasound emerge to give them access to sex determination. (…)Today China is seeing a sharp rise in bride-buying and trafficking of women, both for marriage and for sex. So-called ‘‘marriage agencies’’ have cropped up across China to help men buy wives. Women are typically trafficked from poor western provinces to eastern China. I met several women in reporting my book who were brought from rural Yunnan province to Jiangsu province to marry men who spoke a different dialect and belonged to a different culture. The men might just as well have been foreign, so different are these two areas. Increasingly, women are also trafficked internationally from countries like Vietnam and North Korea to provide Chinese men with wives. The U.S. State Department now lists China’s sex-ratio imbalance as a major cause of trafficking in the region. Meanwhile, as technology moves forward, we are entering a new era of sex selection. Evidence 6: Violation of Natural Law and the Rights of the : “Abortion is a crime against humanity, as vile as the murder perpetrated against The Jews by The Nazi regime, and every other brutal dictator who has made murder of innocent civilians a matter of state policy. (…)The abortion clinics of Planned Parenthood are the same as the gas chambers used in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Treblinka, Sobibor, to name a few of the extermination camps which resulted in the systematic murder of at least 6 million Jews and at least 10 million others, including gypsies, political prisoners, the handicapped, aged, Polish, Russians, Ukranians, Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and all of the populations the Nazis deemed undesirable. A total of 1.5 million children were put to death. The legacy of The Nazis has and will live forever in infamy. (…) The abortion clinics are no different than the means used to put other populations to death. The abortion clinics especially Planned Parenthood which has been used as the main slaughterhouse to end the lives of the pre-born populations by means of brutal torture, including dismembering their bodies while still in the womb. The abortionist then both tears and cuts the fetus and uses the vacuum machine to extract its remains. The legality of torture to assist in the murder of the pre-born child is in direct violation of international law. (…)Under The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (commonly abbreviated as the CRC, CROC, or UNCRC) is a human rights treaty setting out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. The Convention defines a child as any human being under the age of eighteen, unless the age of majority is attained earlier under a state’s own domestic legislation. (…) Also, The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (United Nations Convention against Torture) is an international human rights instrument, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture around the world. (…) Abortion is an act of torture against a child resulting in murder, which is in direct violation of The United Nations Convention. (…) “In a saline abortion, amniotic fluid is removed from the woman and replaced by a strong saline (salt) solution. As the fetus’ lungs absorb the salt solution, it begins to suffocate. It may struggle and may even have convulsions. The saline also burns off the fetus’ outer layer of skin. Saline abortion can take one to six hours before the fetus is no longer viable.”(…) “Hysterotomy: after 18 weeks This procedure is the same as a cesarean section (in which the doctor cuts through the abdomen and uterus to deliver the baby), except that in a hysterotomy, no medical attention is given to the baby upon delivery to help it survive. Most often, a wet towel is placed over the baby’s face so it can’t breathe. Sometimes the baby placed in a bucket of water. The goal is to have a baby that won’t survive.” (…) Prostaglandin Chemical Abortion :This form of abortion uses chemicals developed by the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Co. which cause the uterus to contract intensely, pushing out the developing baby. The contractions are more violent than normal, natural contractions, so the unborn baby is frequently killed by them — some have even been decapitated. Many, however, have also been born alive. (…) “D & X (Dilation and Extraction): from 20 weeks after last menstrual period to full term. Also called “partial birth abortion.” This procedure takes three days. During the first two days, the woman’s cervix is dilated. She is given medication for cramping. On the third day, she receives medication to induce labor. As the woman labors, the abortionist uses an ultrasound to locate the baby’s legs. The abortionist then grasps a leg with forceps and delivers the baby up to its head. Next, using scissors, the abortionist creates an opening in the base of the baby’s skull. A suction catheter is inserted into the skull opening, and the baby’s brains are suctioned out. The skull collapses, and the rest of the baby’s body is delivered through the birth canal.” (…) Each and every person who has assisted in the extermination of the pre-born populations must be held responsible for the crimes against humanity.”Alisa Wiedemer: “Abortion is a direct violation of every human's right to life, protected by the UN Human Rights Declaration Article 3, because it deprives pre-born humans of their very lives. The UN Declaration of Human Rights clearly states: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person" (Article 3).? Whenever faced with such a confrontation the first argument raised is that the pre-born are not human. However, according to the Law of Biogenesis it must be human since this states that every species must reproduce after their own kind (Law of Biogenesis). That means a dog can only bear dogs and cats only cats. Logically, it follows that humans can only reproduce more humans. "The baby is human from the moment of conception. When the one cell it is made of has characteristic 46 chromosomes of the human species, it is unique from that moment. Eighteen days after conception [your} baby's heart is already beating, probably pumping a different blood type [than yours] …. Forty days after conception, (doctors) have recorded brain waves. If you touch a little baby's nose at that point it will draw its head back, so there is definitely some sensation at that time" (Dr. McMillan) Despite this knowledge, many today are still unwilling to face the fact of the pre-born being fully human and therefore deserving of the right to life.? Logic and medical evidence dictate that the pre-born must be human, yet the next argument of the pro-abortionist lobby is that this human is not alive. Today, scientists can prove with the help of ultra-sound and modern technology that indeed the unborn is growing and moving around in the womb and it can even feel pain. "In fact, unborn babies probably feel pain more intensely than adults. This is a uniquely vulnerable time since the pain system is fully established, yet the higher level pain-modifying system has barely begun to develop” (Dr. Paul Ranalli).? Another method of attempting to prove the pre-born do not deserve the right to life can be shortened to one abbreviation- SLED: Size, Level of development, Environment and Dependency. For example, debaters often argue that the pre-born has no right to life because it is totally dependant on the mother. This is a form of discrimination towards the pre-born, because the foundation of this argument rests the right to life on dependency. So what they are basically saying is, that humans with a great dependency on someone have no right to exist. In this case, we should think about the dependency of a toddler and a teenager. The teenager is less dependent than the toddler for obvious reasons. The argument that less dependent people have no right to life would mean the toddler should not be able to exist. However, we all know this would not be a just decision. Then logically, it is an unjust decision to kill an innocent human pre-born child based on its dependency. If one were to look at all forms of SLED one would recognize a pattern; that all are a form of discrimination towards the pre-born. "The SLED tactic exposes the argument for abortion for what it really is: unjust discrimination" (Alan Shelmon).? Following these arguments, there is no debate. Abortion is a violation of the Human Right to Life. Instead of killing our young ones, our future- the ones who are going to take care of us when we cannot - we should be doing everything in our power to ensure their survival in our world. If we do not start realizing the value of life in its early stages, then soon there will be no value in life at all, and there will be no reason why you and I have right to life.” ECLJ: “Although European states have been given a margin of appreciation to define the beginning of entitlement to the right to life, the European Court has explicitly rejected the existence of a right to abortion under article 8 on personal autonomy. It has also stated that the unborn child deserves to be treated with human dignity (Vo v. France) and that the prohibition of abortion alone, even one on health grounds, does not violate the European Convention (for instance, in A.B.& C. v. Ireland), as Puppinck describes in the book chapter “Abortion and the European Court of Human Rights”. Jakob Pichon: “There is no crucial difference between a fetus and a child already born, because both are similarly dependent upon their mother. The mere fact that the fetus does not have an independent existence from its mother does not lead to a different result and, as this case illustrates very well, separate protection is needed at least for the viable fetus and its mother. (…) Consequently the interpretation of Article 2 must evolve with these new developments, requiring now the inclusion of the right to life of the fetus. (…) In this respect it should be noted that a number of recent conventions and the prohibition on the reproductive cloning of ”human beings” under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union show that the protection of life extends to the initial phase of human life. Consequently, the ECtHR must take such a development into account in order to define the ordinary meaning of the right to life. ” Mitchell Kalpakgian: “THE NATURAL LAW is one of the oldest moral concepts in the history of civilization. In Western culture the idea of the natural law finds foremost expression in the literature and thought of ancient Greece and Rome. The discovery of the natural moral law on the part of Greek and Roman thinkers explains such great moral insights as Plato’s ideas of the true, the good, and the beautiful; Socrates’s teaching that it is better to suffer wrong than to do evil; Aristotle’s notion of the golden mean in his definition of virtue as a form of moderation or balance that avoids the extremes of excess and deficiency; the concept of the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance; and the stoic ideal of duty and obligation as the highest good. The natural law, however, transcends the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome and encompasses all men. (…) This one simple example of the existence of the natural law proves that it is indeed natural, inborn, and native to people of all nations and cultures. In other words, the natural law is not invented or formulated by man but discovered as inherent in the structure of reality, in the “nature of things.” It is as real, constant, and universal as the laws that govern the sunrise and sunset. The natural law is independent of opinion and not relative to culture. It encompasses people of all nations, races, and religions, and it is the basis of international law, what the Founding Fathers call “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” (…) The Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in America and changed the traditional, time-honored meanings of good and evil, allowing the killing of pre-born children on the basis of a woman' s right to privacy, reversing 2,000 years of custom, tradition, law, and religion and capitulating to feminist special-interest groups. This view of abortion, however, as a matter of opinion and relative truth avoids the reality of natural law that binds all men and transcends political trends. (…)For two thousand years, from the beginning of the Roman Empire, the Christian tradition consistently defended the sanctity of life from conception until death. (…) Abortion is also condemned by all of the world' s great religions, not merely by the Catholic Church or the Christian tradition. Vedic spiritual writings from India that date from about 1000 B.C., Hinduism, conservative and orthodox Judaism, and Islam have all acknowledged abortion as an heinous evil and grave crime. Even Hippocrates, a pagan Greek physician, writes in his famous Oath, “I will give no deadly medicine even if asked, nor suggest to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.” This universal consensus about the evil of abortion, then, can hardly be termed a matter of subjective opinion, cultural bias, or relative truth. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Rabbinical Court of America, Rabbi Marvin S. Antleman, describes the problem of abortion as one of “universal morality,” and he adds, “It is neither a Catholic problem, nor a Jewish problem, nor a Protestant problem. It involves the killing of a human being, an act forbidden by universal commandment.” (…) Unalienable rights have priority over government policies and Supreme Court decisions. The legalization or institutionalization of a practice or policy such as abortion-on-demand does not make it moral because the natural law and God’s justice have greater weight than Supreme court decisions. Roe v. Wade is just as immoral, cruel, and inhumane as the Dred Scott decision that sanctioned slavery and classified blacks as the “chattel” or property of slave-owners. (…) In Baltimore, a pregnant drug user was placed under court orders to protect the health of the fetus. She was ordered not to inflict harm upon the pre-born child through the use of drugs. However, while the court could hold her liable for impairing the health of the child in her womb, Roe v. Wade allowed her to kill this same child because of her right to privacy. Will’s second example proves that under the law a fetus has a right to inherit property. In Maryland, if the fetus is conceived before the death of the person from whom the property is inherited, the fetus may be a beneficiary. The child that is entitled to an inheritance, however, is not entitled to the right to life if a woman chooses to abort. Will’s third example demonstrates that a fetus has a right to prenatal medical care. He writes, “Malpractice cases are establishing that a child born injured as the result of negligent prenatal medicine can claim violation of rights it had as a fetus.” In another case in 1983 in California a police officer who killed the fetus of a woman in a drug raid was convicted for the killing of the child in the womb. So how can a pre-born child have a right to protection, a right to inherit, and a right to prenatal care and yet have no right to life? Non sequitur. It is illegal to deny the pre-born child pre-natal care and criminal to shoot the child in the womb, yet it is perfectly lawful for a woman to pay an abortionist to destroy the very child that other laws protect. (…) The pre-born child, like the newborn infant, is helpless, weak, dependent, and in need of protection and nourishment. No one could be more innocent. The pro-abortion argument ignores these facts and selfevident truths, rejects common sense, evades reality, and suppresses the truth. (…)Is it just to deprive women considering an abortion truthful information regarding the fetal development of their children or to deny them a full knowledge of abortion techniques and their consequences? Is it reasonable to refer to abortion as a “safe, legal” procedure when it has caused a multitude of problems from infertility to infection to an increase in the risk of cancer, and is it honest to speak of abortion as “safe” when it often leads to such psychological disorders as post-abortion-stress syndrome that produces guilt, anger, despair, and nightmares? (…) All these questions appeal to common sense, the power of reason, the natural law, and the dictates of conscience. They are not the questions of extreme religious bigots who are manipulating evidence to superimpose their narrow, unenlightened views and idiosyncratic personal opinions upon a pluralistic society. Rather they are bona fide and legitimate questions that honor the universal moral norms of civilization that recognize the blessing of children and the sanctity of human life. (…) Unlike the natural law, whose defenders include great minds like Sophocles, St. Paul, Cicero, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Founding Fathers of America, Edmund Burke, and C. S. Lewis, abortion is related to radical left-wing movements, totalitarian policies, and demonic practices. (…)Whether it is Communist ideology that denies man’s spiritual, religious nature or feminist ideology that rejects the maternal, nurturing nature of womanhood or abortion ideology that does not recognize the reality or personhood of the pre-born child, ideology defies the truth of things and the structure of reality. It attempts to remold human nature according to its own pre-conceived, arbitrary definitions and fabrications, and it invents new language, jargon, and euphemisms to change reality.”Grégor Puppinck: “A recent trend in Europe toward a restriction on abortion shows abortion is a social problem, and not a right or individual freedom. (…) ABORTION IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT (…) Prenatal Life is Not Excluded from the Scope of Protection of the European Convention: The Court must determine how to interpret the practice of abortion within the parameters and logic of the Convention, including its legal reasoning, internal consistency, and case law. Indeed, when the Convention was drafted, abortion was widely criminalized because it was considered a direct violation of the right to life of the unborn child. Only abortion induced in order to save the life of the mother was legal. The central question was, and still is, whether or not the unborn child is a person within the meaning of Article 2, protecting “everyone’s right to life. The Court has kept this question open in order to allow the States to determine when life begins, and therefore, when legal protection should start. (…)Member States have a duty under the Convention to ban painful or forced abortions. Therefore, Member States are not totally free to determine the availability and legal status of abortion (…) Through its various rulings, the Court has declared that abortion is not a right under the Convention, that is, there is no right to have an abortion, as in Martins Ribeiro v. Portugal, or to practice abortion, as in Jean-Jacques v. Belgium. The prohibition of abortion per se by a State does not violate the Convention, following precedent from Martins Ribeiro v. Portugal, as well as from the case of the first two applicants, A, B and C v. Ireland, who unsuccessfully sued the State for its prohibition of abortion on demand. (…) The right to life of the unborn child is not the only right under the Convention affected by abortion. The Convention also protects the rights implicated by late-term abortions and sexist abortions, under articles 3 and 8 of the Convention, respectively. The Court applied article 3 prohibiting torture to the unborn in Boso v. Italy and the “right to respect for . . . family life” guaranteed by article 8 to the “potential father” in W.P. v. the United Kingdom as well as to the potential grandmother in P. and S. v. Poland. (…) Abortion on Demand is Not Justified Under the Convention: It is uncontested, even by advocates for a right to abortion, that there is no direct or indirect right to abortion on demand or abortion for socioeconomic reasons under any international or regional treaty, including the European Convention on Human Rights. Abortion on demand is illegal in several European countries and in about seven out of ten countries in the world. When the Convention was drafted, abortion on demand was widely recognized as a crime. (…) Therefore, while abortion on demand finds no justification under the Convention, it affects rights and interests guaranteed and recognized by the Convention. The curtailment of those rights and interests by abortion on demand is neither balanced with nor justified by any competing right guaranteed by the Convention. Consequently, abortion on demand violates the Convention even though it represents the vast majority of all abortions performed. These violations permitted by States are even more flagrant when one considers not only negative obligations of States under the Convention to not take life, but also their positive obligations to protect and support lives of the unborn, pregnant women, and the family generally. (…) The Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg has recognized that “the fundamental principles safeguarding the dignity and integrity of the person” apply to the human embryo, which deserves the protection of law as it is a stage in the developmental process of the human being. (…) Both politically and legally, European law does not recognize, much less guarantee, the right to an abortion. Furthermore, international law guarantees the right to life for every human being and encourages States “to reduce the recourse to abortion” which “must, as far as possible, be avoided.” (…) Thus, the promotion of abortion as an individual right is in decline for two powerful reasons: through experience, one finds liberal legislation leads to unsatisfactory results, and through scientific reasoning, one finds that further progress prompts many more to reconsider the dignity of the human being from conception. The decline of the right to abortion is more challenging for society than its advance because it demands that we be more human, responsible, and united, in order to recognize and welcome the lives of persons at all stages of development.”VERA L?CIA RAPOSO, CATARINA PRATA & ISABEL ORTIG?O DE OLIVEIRA: “On the opposite site, other authors (mainly catholic ones) consider the embryo, not only a human life, but also a human person, just like the already born. This perspective forbids any kind of use of the embryo, which is considered as an instrumentalization of the human person, so censured by the Kantian philosophy. Therefore, the embryo ought to be granted the entire list of human rights, just as a human born person, and its destruction should be qualified as a homicide. Similar to this position is the one that, although denying the embryo the qualification of person, reaches that same result by assuring it an absolute protection, in the name of the ontological solidarity between human beings. (…) can also find laws that report juridical personhood to the moment of conception (art. 70 of the Argentinian Civil Code), consequently considering the unborn as a person. (…), some counties have passed laws that punish pregnant women for conducts during pregnancy that harm the foetus, even with criminal sanctions, which may signify a turning point also in criminal doctrine. (…) The 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child asserts, in its preamble, that ?The child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.? This kind of statement leave the idea that by ?child? the Convention intends to represent the born as well as the unborn, according to both of them the enjoyment of the rights announced in its text. (…) If we pay some attention to Comparative law, we can conclude that other international documents are much more unequivocal as to the protection offered to the unborn. Both the ICCPR (art. 6.5 ICCPR) and the American Convention on Human Rights (art. 4.5 ACHR) forbid the execution of death penalty in pregnant women, and this prohibition provides us a consistent base to deduce some safeguard to the human being that women are carrying in their uterus, since this creature is, obviously, the subject of the referred protection. (…) The ACHR is the most unequivocal one, since art. 4 explicitly declares that human life is protected from conception: ?Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.? As far as we know, is the only international text that achieves such a level of determinability in this particular issue, in accordance with the kind of protection granted to the unborn in the national laws of Latin American countries. (…) In 1999 another convention of the Council of Europe entered into a force, addressing the legal issues raised by biomedicine and new technologies: the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (ECHRBM). (…) The most important norm for our discussion is art. 18, about research on in vitro embryos. It states the following: ?where the law allows research on embryos in vitro, it shall ensure adequate protection of the embryo? (No. 1); ?the creation of human embryos for research purposes is prohibited? (No. 2).(…) In 2001 President George Bush stated that the North-American government would not release funds from stem cells research, by invoking that ?like a snowflake, each of these embryos is unique, with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being?. (…) Nevertheless, the embryo is indeed a human being for the reason that his life is human. (…) And certainly it does not mean that embryos are excluded from human dignity, given that the mere fact of belonging to human species is enough to extend them the value and respect inherent to human dignity.” Jan Deckers: “Many health professionals appeal to this right to give recognition to their belief that unborn human beings should be granted the prima facie right to life. (…) abortions should no longer be allowed on the basis of the possibility that there might be "a substantial risk" that the fetus would be "seriously handicapped". I come to this conclusion because allowing abortions on the ground that the fetus might be "seriously handicapped" provides a legal justification for discrimination against 'disabled' fetuses. I can find no good reason why people born with 'disabilities' should lack the right to life that we normally grant to more 'able' people. By analogy, it is not clear why 'disabled' fetuses should be granted fewer moral entitlements than more 'able' fetuses. (…) While those who become 'disabled' later on in life are often treated as inferior compared to those who are perceived to be more 'able', those who defend the rights of 'disabled' people have often defended the view that they should be regarded as persons with equal rights, in spite of the fact that they might need more support from other people. If their claims are valid – which I think they are – I fail to see why discrimination against 'disabled' fetuses should be allowed on the basis of the fact that they might require more help. (…) Indeed, if the emphasis is placed on measuring the nature and degree of a child's 'disability' and associated misery, such a position would logically require that the scope for killing 'disabled' young children should even be greater compared to the scope for killing 'disabled' fetuses. (…)I do not agree with the view that others should be allowed to kill them on the basis of their view that their lives are not worth living. (…) Abortions on fetuses who could survive outside the womb – sometimes referred to as 'viable' fetuses – should no longer be allowed. Since they are morally equivalent with the killing of newborn children, I find that such abortions are deeply problematic. When there are no developmental differences between two fetuses, it is hard to understand why (even on a 'gradualist' account of moral status) it should be acceptable to give one the right to life as soon as it has left the womb, while it should also be acceptable to kill the other provided the killing occurs before the fetus has left the womb. If the ground on which a termination of a pregnancy is requested when it involves a fetus who could survive outside the womb is recognised as legitimate, the termination should occur without the fetus being killed so that the fetus can be given the same standard of care that is provided to other prematurely born babies.”S de Freitas & G Myburgh: “Human rights and "being human" are inextricably connected to each other. (…) Close analysis of the legal status and protection of the unborn in international law in general and many domestic legal systems suggests that the determination of when the entity becomes human is not left entirely to the mother (although this is the dominant approach), and that the matter is generally considered to be important. This sense of the importance of the matter should motivate the legal establishment to attempt to develop a deliberative platform on the legal status and protection of the unborn.”Patrick J. Flood: “The Universal Declaration has inspired all of the human rights conventions and subsequent declarations adopted since it was proclaimed by the General Assembly in 1948. It speaks in its Preamble of the “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” and it states in Article 3 that “Everyone has the right to life…” and in Article 6 that “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” Article 7 adds the notion of equality: “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to every protection of the law” (italics added). These affirmations are not qualified as to age or limited to the born, and it would be difficult to understand them as not including the living but-not-yet-born. The “all members of the human family” of the Preamble, for instance, can only mean all members of the human species, and the “everyone” of Articles 3 and 6 has to mean “every human being,” i.e., every living member of the species. Similarly, the “all” who in Article 7 are declared to be equal to each other must refer to “all members of the human family.” Abortion was not a major political or legal issue in 1948, and very few countries allowed it on any but the most serious grounds, notably when necessary to prevent the death of the mother. Although the drafters of the Declaration decided not to deal directly with the unborn, they opted for the broadest and most inclusive language possible to describe the subjects of human rights. As will be shown, one finds evidence in subsequent instruments to support the argument that the international community of states has taken the view that an unborn “member of the human family” is included in the protection of international law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)[:] The Covenant, one of the two principal binding instruments foreshadowed by the Universal Declaration, says in Article 6, paragraph 1 that “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” As in the Declaration, the scope of “every human being” is not defined but neither is it limited, and certainly the ordinary meaning of the term is unambiguous. Further, in the next sentence, “no one” must mean “no human being” or it means nothing. Paragraph 5 of the same article provides in part that “Sentence of death shall not be carried out on pregnant women.” To underscore the importance of the right to life, Article 4 of the Covenant provides that not even “in time of public emergency threatening the life of the nation” may a state derogate from any part of Article 6. The foregoing provisions, and particularly the ban on execution of a pregnant woman, are clear expressions of a shared understanding that the unborn child is a human being who, as such, has an independent claim to protection and merits official recognition and intercession. These provisions otherwise make little sense. The ban on execution of a pregnant woman, which is unqualified and without exception, can have only one foundation, namely, to spare the life of an innocent human being, her child. Moreover, it is only the fact that the woman is carrying an innocent child that exempts her from being put to death. She need not file any appeal or take other action to gain this exemption. (…) Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)[:] Like the Covenant, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was preceded by a declaration, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), which includes in its Preamble a significant affirmation of the rights of the unborn: Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth, [and] whereas the need for such special safeguards has been…recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the statutes of specialized agencies and international organizations concerned with the welfare of children…, the General Assembly…calls upon…national Governments to recognize these rights and strive for their observance by legislative and other measures progressively taken….” The Preamble to the Convention, adopted thirty years later, refers three times to the Universal Declaration and twice to the 1959 Declaration, and reiterates in Paragraph 9 that As indicated in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, ‘the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth. Article 1 of the Convention defines a child as “every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the laws applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.” During negotiations on this Article, some members of the Human Rights Commission Working Group would have defined a child as every human being from the moment of birth. However, other members, noting that this would conflict with the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), as well as with the laws of many member states, proposed as a definition “every human being from the moment of conception.” Both formulations attracted strong support as well as opposition in the drafting group; because the group operated on the basis of consensus, it settled on the language finally adopted. “Every human being below the age of eighteen years” clearly does not exclude the unborn, as it does exclude human beings who have attained the age of eighteen. (…) One finds strong grounds for States Parties to maintain that the Convention does guarantee protection to the unborn child. (…) The Convention definition of “child” can clearly embrace the unborn. What the Convention requires of states parties is to give effect to its provisions, as is the case with all international legal agreements. In this case, the obligation would be to give meaningful legislative effect to the established need for “appropriate legal protection...before as well as after birth.” (…) In 1997 the [Convention on the Rights of the Child Committee, hereinafter CRC Committee] took a clear stand in favor of disabled unborn children when it urged states to amend “discriminatory laws on abortion affecting disabled children….” Additionally, it has also urged states to study “factors which lead to practices such as female infanticide and selective abortions, and to develop strategies to address them.” The Committee has also criticized high rates of (legal) abortion and the use of abortion as a method of family planning in some states (…). These analyses, a careful reading of the Convention itself, and the Committee’s practice over the years, can be read as supporting a preference for unborn life. (…) Article 70 of Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions (1977) mentions expectant mothers among those persons to be given priority in the distribution of relief consignments, as they are among the groups to be “accorded privileged treatment or special protection” under the Fourth Convention as well as the Protocol. Article 76 of Protocol 1 provides that Parties to an armed conflict “shall endeavor to avoid the pronouncement of the death penalty on pregnant women and mothers having dependent infants…. The death penalty shall not be executed…on such women.” Protocol II (1977) to the Conventions states in Art. 6 that “the death penalty shall not be carried out on pregnant women or mothers of young children.” (…)These provisions in the Fourth Convention and the two Protocols, and the prohibitions on executing pregnant women in the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the Arab Charter on Human Rights, provide strong evidence of a widespread international commitment to protecting unborn human beings.(…) In the Declaration on Human Cloning, adopted 84-34 on March 3, 2005, the UN General Assembly called upon Member States “to adopt all measures necessary to protect adequately human life in the application of life sciences… [and] to prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life....” The Declaration is thus a clear affirmation that human life even at its earliest stages is deserving of legal protection. Other operative paragraphs call on States to adopt measures “to prohibit the application of genetic engineering techniques that may be contrary to human dignity [and]… to take measures to prevent the exploitation of women in the application of life sciences.” (…) The American Convention on Human Rights (1969), which entered into force in 1978, contains the following provisions relevant to the right to life of the unborn: Article 1. Obligation to Respect Rights. For the purposes of this Convention, “person” means every human being. Article 3. Right to Juridical Personality. Every person has the right to recognition as a person before the law. Article 4. Right to Life. Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. Capital punishment shall not be imposed upon persons who, at the time the crime was committed, were under 18 years of age or over 70 years of age; nor shall it be applied to pregnant women. The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948), which applies to members of the Organization of American States that have not ratified the Convention, [In its] Article I states: “Every human being has the right to life, liberty, and the security of his person.” (…) This essay has argued that existing human rights and humanitarian legal instruments and high-level intergovernmental declarations provide important recognition of the right to life of an unborn child and a degree of protection to that child. They add up to a decided preference for life, even in provisions where unborn children are not mentioned directly but are inevitably among the beneficiaries. These children may be silent and unnamed, but they are there. Moreover, there is general agreement that international law does not affirm an international right to obtain an abortion. There is no indication of a right to abortion, even by implication, in any of the foregoing international legal instruments, with the exception of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, and even that exception is ambiguous and conflicts with other legal provisions.” Alvaro Paul: “the legislation of countries whose constitutions make no explicit reference to conception, but whose legal system bans every type of direct abortion, as in the case of Chile, Nicaragua, and Honduras. El Salvador and the Dominican Republic-whose Constitutions protect life from the moment of conception-also forbid every kind of direct abortion. Another interesting case is Costa Rica, whose constitutional jurisprudence forbids in vitro fertilization in its current stage of development, arguing that it involves a high mortality rate for embryos. Moreover, if the importance given to the life of the unborn is understood as a guiding value of the Inter-American regional system, it would not seem to be a coincidence that all of the previously referred countries are signatories to the ACHR, while the majority of States with liberal abortion laws are not (e.g. United States, Canada) (…) the former President of the Inter-American Commission, Marco Monroy Cabra, wrote when he was a delegate of that organization, "[i]t is obvious that the Pact of San Jos is more developed [than the ICCPR] since it protects life 'from the moment of conception.' This may involve some difficulties for the States which allow abortion in certain circumstances." Monroy goes even further by saying that "the right to be born is a particular manifestation of the right to life, whereby the great majority of States define abortion as a crime." (…) In the light of the above, it is clear that the ACHR's text considers embryos and fetuses as persons and grants them the right to life.” Grégor Puppinck: “Abortion on demand [abortions which were not motivated by health reasons, but only by the will of the mother] harms the unborn child without any proportionate motive. (…) The “principle of sanctity of life” is “protected under the Convention” and recognised by the European Court, which affirms that “the right to life is an inalienable attribute of the human beings and forms the supreme value in the hierarchy of human rights”. International human rights instruments recognise life as a primary right. The right to life is the first to be guaranteed in (…) the European Convention on Human Rights which provides that: “everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law”. (…) When the Convention was drafted, there was a broad consensus on the criminal nature of “abortion on demand”. Thus, the Court itself has never redefined, so as to reduce, the scope of Article 2: the Court has never excluded prenatal life from its field of application. (…) Other provisions of European and international human rights instruments also offer protection to the unborn child referring to his/her various stages of development (e.g. embryo and foetus). Many European human rights instruments relating to bioethics contain provisions on prenatal life, such as the Oviedo Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, the Additional Protocol on the Prohibition of Cloning Human Beings and the Additional Protocol on Biomedical Research. (…) In the European Court of Justice (E.C.J.) judgment of 18 October 2011, in the case of Oliver Brüstle v. Greenpeace e.V, the Grand Chamber of the E.C.J., interpreting E.U. Directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, ruled that the embryo enjoys protection from the stage of fertilisation against patenting, when the patent application requires the prior destruction of human embryos. The principle of dignity and integrity of the person protects the human embryo and the cells derived from it at any stage of its formation or development. The E.C.J. has defined the “human embryo” as “any human ovum after fertilisation, any non-fertilised human ovum into which the cell nucleus from a mature human cell has been transplanted, and any nonfertilised human ovum whose division and further development have been stimulated by parthenogenesis”. This is the first decision of a European Court which provides a definition of the human embryo. The Court specified that this definition is “an autonomous concept of European Union law”. This means that in relation to European Union law, the meaning and scope of the term “human embryo” must be given a uniform and independent interpretation throughout the European Union. The Member States are no longer free to choose their own definition of the “human embryo” when applying the Directive. (…)There is no right to practise abortion under the Convention: Just as there is no right to have an abortion, there is no right to practise it. The doctors cannot invoke such a right and complain of their conviction for practising illegal abortion. The Commission and the Court have rejected applications brought by physicians for having been convicted for aiding or practising illegal abortions. In the case of Jerzy Tokarczyk v. Poland, the Court held that the complaint of a gynaecologist against his conviction of aiding and abetting abortion was manifestly ill-founded. The applicant offered his assistance to women who wished to have an abortion, to organise their journey to the Ukraine, where they had abortions in a public hospital. (…) The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (hereafter P.A.C.E.) adopted a Resolution in 2010, strongly upholding “the right to conscientious objection in lawful medical care” declaring that: “[n]o person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion, the performance of a human miscarriage, or euthanasia or any act which could cause the death of a human foetus or embryo, for any reason”. (…) The Court cannot interpret the Convention so as to create new rights not included in the Convention or which are contrary to the existing rights: The Court cannot create a right to abortion because its interpretive power is limited (…) Abortion cannot constitute a right in itself: (…) Abortion, being a derogation of the right to life, cannot constitute a right in itself; it cannot become an autonomous right. As a derogation, its scope is limited by the principle to which it refers. President Costa explained in this regard that: I believe (as do many senior judicial bodies in Europe) that there is life before birth, within the meaning of Article 2, that the law must therefore protect such life, and that if a national legislature considers that such protection cannot be absolute, then it should only derogate from it, particularly as regards the voluntary termination of pregnancy, within a regulated framework that limits the scope of the derogation. (…) Other institutions, such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, have identified other rights and interests which justify or necessitate limitations on access to abortion, such as the interest of society to ban sex selective abortion, also called “gendercide”. (…) The Cairo Conference on Population and Development associates prenatal sex-selection with female infanticide. Forced abortion has been identified as a crime against humanity since the Nuremberg trials. Ten Nazi leaders were indicted for “encouraging and compelling abortions”. More recently, the European Parliament adopted a Resolution which “condemns the practice of forced abortions and sterilisations globally, especially in the context of the (China) one-child policy”. Coerced or compelled abortion is also impossible to justify under the Convention and this is clearly a violation of both rights of the mother and of the child. (…) The right to life is an absolute and inalienable right, it is at the very core of human rights; and as we saw above, the Court has never denied the quality of “person” of the unborn child, and therefore has never excluded him/her from the scope of the Convention. The frequent assertion that the relative right to health (of the mother) outweighs the absolute right to life (of the unborn child) implies that the unborn child is not considered a person, that he/she is ontologically different and inferior to his/her mother. (…) In order for the Court to analyse the conventionality of the practice of abortion, the case should have, at least apparently, an objective motive that may outweigh the interests in favour of the protection of the life of the unborn child. Examining its case law, it appears that the Court has never admitted that the autonomy of the woman could, on its own, suffice to justify an abortion. (…) Neither the Convention, nor the Court when interpreting the Convention, excludes prenatal life from the scope of the protection of the Convention, which contains a right to life and not a right to abortion. In most European States, abortion is a derogation from the right to life.” 1994 Cairo Conference on population on development: “4.16: The objectives are: To eliminate all forms of discrimination against the girl child and the root causes of son preference, which results in harmful and unethical practices regarding female infanticide and prenatal sex selection”.Jeffrey C. Tuomala: “The crime of abortion played prominently in two international trials held at Nuremberg following World War li-the Goering and Greifelt cases. Allied prosecutors made the case that voluntary and involuntary abortion were war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Goering judgment identified the Political Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party as a criminal organization, in part because of its policies promoting abortion. The Greifelt indictment charged ten defendants with voluntary and involuntary abortion. The prosecution's case focused in part on the Nazis' removal of the protection of law from unborn children in occupied Poland and unborn children of Eastern workers in Germany that the Nazis considered racially non-valuable. The prosecution argued that voluntary abortion was punishable because it was a crime against the unborn child. The prosecution proceeded on the theory that Germany had a duty to afford protection of law to unborn children and that the deliberate failure of high-level officials to do so constituted crimes against humanity and genocide by acts of omission. (…)The abortion policies followed from Nazi racial theory and were an integral part of a comprehensive plan for Germanization. On the one hand, only those persons with racially valuable Aryan blood had the capacity to be Germanized, as that process was not simply a matter of enculturation. On the other hand, the proliferation of non-Aryans presented a biological threat to Germany. Abortion policies were therefore designed to increase Germany's population by prohibiting abortion of Aryan children and to decrease non-German populations by encouraging abortion of non-Aryan children. (…) The slogan "blood and soil" provides the context for understanding Nazi atrocities, including the promotion of abortion as a means of genocide. (…) [T]he Nazis implemented policies designed to strengthen Germanism, they adopted other policies to weaken or eliminate non-Germanic people. The abortion policies served both purposes. The Nazis preferred that the Eastern workers not become pregnant so that they would not be taken out of the workforce, and they preferred that pregnant women not give birth to children of no racial value because it propagated non-Aryan blood. The Nazis promoted abortion by removing the protection of law from racially non-valuable unborn children in Poland and Germany. (…) At trial, in presenting and arguing its case, the prosecution treated abortion as a crime against humanity, a war crime, and an activity marking a criminal organization. (…) However, the IMT's declaration that the Political Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party was a criminal organization-based in part on its role in effecting Nazi abortion policies-was extremely important. That declaration reflected the IMT's judgment that abortion was a crime even if criminal responsibility could not be placed on any particular individual on trial. The focus of the prosecutors' efforts and the tribunals' attention was not upon abortion doctors and other lower-level Nazi personnel but upon high-level policymakers and government officials who removed the protection of law from unborn children. The portions of the judgments relating to the crime of abortion in both Goering and Greifelt focused exclusively on written policies and high-level policymakers and officials. The focus on high-level actors reflected the objective of exposing the immensity of Nazi atrocities and the horror resulting from them. (…) Extending the concept of crimes against humanity to reach policymakers for decisions made during peacetime that impacted their own nationals has far-reaching implications. (…) If a nation's crimes against its own nationals are violations of international law and not simply domestic matters, then military intervention by other nations or international bodies is justified and the offenders may be tried in international courts. Extending the concept of crimes against humanity to peacetime changed the very nature of international law because the principle of nonintervention into the domestic affairs of foreign countries had been a cornerstone of traditional international law. (…) Shawcross also addressed the concept of crimes against humanity. (…) He included the evidence of individual responsibility for abortion in the section of his argument dealing with the murder of civilians and the "belligerent occupation of the [conquered] territories. " He specifically addressed Document R-36, which implicated Bormarm and Rosenberg, and he quoted from it as evidence of Nazi genocide: The Nazis also used various biological devices, as they have been called, to achieve genocide. They deliberately decreased the birthrate in the occupied countries by sterilization, castration, and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage. I quote: "We are obliged to depopulate"----said Hitler to Rauschning-"as part of onr mission of preserving the German population. We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation .... " (…) By the close of World War II, most countries still criminalized abortion. German and Polish law treated abortion as a crime. Undoubtedly, the prosecutors simply assumed that the unborn children of Slavs and Jews were human beings just as their mothers were. Unjustified killing of a human being is criminal homicide. It was no more necessary to prove t at a treaty or custom particularly identified Slavs and Jews as human beings than it was to prove that their unborn children were human beings. It was implicitly recognized. The prosecution did expressly identify abortion as one of the biological devices that the Nazi's used to commit genocide. (…)The premise that unborn children are human beings subject to protection of law is implicit in the criminalization of voluntary abortion. (…) Article 46 of Hague IV (1907): The prosecution also relied upon treaty law. The indictment cited article 46 of Hague Convention IV (1907) as a source of legal authority defining crimes against humanity Article 46 states: "Family honour and rights, the lives of persons, and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice, must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated." The prosecution argued that even if an abortion were truly voluntary, it violated not only section 218 of the German Penal Code, but article 46 of Hague Convention IV (1907) as well. Abortion, it asserted, was a war crime as defined in article II(b) of C. C. Law I 0 because abortion violated article 46, "which provides that family honor and rights must be respected." The prosecution argued that "[i]t is also an act of 'ill-treatment' of a civilian population." If abortion is truly voluntary, the "rights" violated are those of the unborn child, and the sector of the "civilian population" that is ill-treated is the unborn. The prosecution reinforced its position by arguing that abortion is a crime against humanity because it "constitutes an act of 'extermination,' 'persecution on racial grounds,' and an 'inhumane act. "' Abortion is simply a form of homicide, and if committed on a vast scale as a matter of state policy, it is genocide. It was unnecessary to prove that any one distinct form of homicide-in this case abortion-violated customary law or a general principle of law common to all civilized nations. (…) There is a clearer explanation for the fact that the various sources of international law converge on the issue of abortion. Including the domestic law of abortion in the sources of international law applied in the Nuremberg tribunals implicitly shows that abortion-like murder, theft, and kidnapping-is a crime malum in se (inherently and essentially wrong). Treaties, customary law, domestic law, and the law of the Control Council all reflected this preexisting law. (…) Medical ethics: Medical ethics provide standards of criminality in international law. (…) For 2,000 years, the foremost statement of the principles for medical ethics had been the Hippocratic oath. The Hippocratic oath requires doctors to protect the lives of unborn children and not to take them-'" I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner, I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. "' (…) Both before and after World War II, the medical profession recognized that unborn children are the object of special protection based on the understanding that they are human beings. (…)The underlying issue in abortion is whether the unborn child is a human being and therefore entitled to the protection of law. The Nuremberg prosecutors made no attempt to prove that unborn children are biologically or genetically human beings. The prosecution's basic premise-that abortion is a crime against the unborn child-presumed that the unborn child is a human being and not some other life form that is protected by law. The prosecution introduced no evidence of fetal development or medical or scientific testimony on the issue, and it made no arguments from philosophy or case precedent. The implication is that such proof was unnecessary because the humanity of the unborn child was not in question. Not even the Nazi defendants argued that unborn children are not human beings. The prosecution made no more attempt to prove that unborn children are fully human than it made to prove that non Aryan adults are human beings protected by law against genocide. (…) A prosecution team comprised of the four major Allied powers presented evidence of Nazi abortion policies as crimes against humanity, war crimes, and as a mark of the Political Leadership Corps as a criminal organization. (…)There are several reasons to reject the conclusion that the tribunal held only; forcible abortion to be a crime. The indictment charged voluntary abortion, and the tribunal acquitted seven of the defendants simply of the crime of abortion. (…) The Nuremberg trials established the principle that abortion is a crime against humanity and that state officials are criminally liable for failing, as a matter of state policy, to extend the protection of law to unborn children. (…) Abortion was one face of Nazi genocide. It was a face unashamed of its purpose-to reduce the growth in populations that the Nazi elite did not "want to have too many of."' ” ................
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