BreakPoint: Where’s the Choice in This?

Last year, a young Chinese woman—let’s call her Dan Li—ran afoul of the Chinese government. She had become “illegally pregnant.” By the time the authorities found out, Dan Li was seven months along. Family planning officials tied her to a bed, induced labor, and, when the baby was born, killed the baby. What happened to Dan Li is an abomination—one, however, that tragically takes place regularly in China. But now, thanks to the U.S. Congress, you and I will be paying for it. Last March, without fanfare, Congress passed a bill providing $50 million for the United Nations Population Fund. This organization promotes abortion around the globe—including in China. What makes the bill especially heinous is that it voided Kemp-Kasten, a bill which, for two decades, prevented our tax dollars from funding forced abortions and sterilization. This blows the lid off the argument that abortion is all about giving a woman choice. If Congress really stands for choice, as they claim, why did they vote for coercion? If feminists are really for choice, why aren’t they fighting this law? Why isn’t our pro-choice President demanding that this brutalization of women be stopped? Abortion is a glaring example of the difference worldview makes. Are all children—Chinese babies or inner-city African American babies—worthy of protection? Are babies just mouths to feed, and a strain on the environment—or are they potential producers and contributors? Do parents have the right under God to have as many children as they desire? Or should governments dictate this decision? Let’s be clear: Coercive family planning is a humanitarian disaster. Reggie Littlejohn is an expert on China’s “One Child” policy for a group called Human Rights Without Frontiers. She points to three negative outcomes of China’s policy. First, “gendercide.” Parents who are forced to limit their families to one child overwhelmingly abort girls. For every 120 boys born in China, there are only 100 girls born. So, since China’s “One Child” policy began in 1978, she writes, “400 million births” have been “prevented.” That’s more than the current U.S. population. Second, China’s gender imbalance “is a powerful, driving force behind trafficking in women and sexual slavery from nations surrounding China.” Third, according to the World Health Organization, China suffers the highest female suicide rate in the world—some 500 women per day. As Littlejohn notes, “Forced abortion traumatizes women. Could this high suicide rate be related to forced abortion?” You and I need to let our friends and churches know about what Congress did—that their taxes being used by the UNFPA to support coercive family planning programs in China. According to Reggie Littlejohn, if there’s enough of an outcry, “Congress can pass an amendment blocking . . . funding from going to nations that practice coercive family planning.” Certainly pro-choicers would agree that women deserve better than to be hunted down and tied up while their babies are killed.  

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For Further Reading and Information

Reggie Garcia Littlejohn, “Thanks to President Obama, Congress, U.S. Now Funding China Forced Abortions,” LifeNews.com, 8 April 2009. “New Evidence Confirms UNFPA Involvement In Coercion,” Population Research Institute, 25 March 2009. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Fund UNFPA Despite Forced Abortion Concerns,” LifeNews.com, 3 June 2009.

06/23/09