The Daily Maily
By Peter Simpson
22nd October 2010
An eight-months pregnant woman was dragged from her home and forced to have an abortion because she had broken China’s one-child-per-family law.
Twelve government officials entered Xiao Aiying’s house where they hit and kicked her in the stomach, before taking her kicking and screaming to hospital. There, the 36-year-old was restrained as doctors injected her with a drug to kill the unborn baby.
Her husband Luo Yanquan, a construction worker, yesterday described the moment officials burst into his family home. ‘They held her hands behind her back and pushed her head against the wall and kicked her in the stomach,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if they were trying to give her a miscarriage.
‘Our ten-year-old daughter has been excited about having a little brother or sister but I don’t know how I can explain to her what has happened.’
Construction worker Luo Yanquan told Al Jazeera how excited his ten-year-old daughter was for her new sibling, only to have the baby lethally injected when his wife was eight months pregnant. He recalled how a month before the child was due to be born officials told the couple they weren’t allowed to have another baby because they already have a daughter. His wife, who was filmed in hospital with large bruises on her arms and her dead child still inside her, said: ‘I have had this baby, feeling it moving around and around my belly. Can you imagine how I feel now.’
Her harrowing experience in Siming, near the city of Xiamen, south-west China, on October 10, comes a month after the government in Beijing said there would be no relaxation in strict family planning laws.
Most Chinese families are allowed only one child to reduce the 1.3 billion-plus population and cut unsustainable demand on resources. The policy leads to an estimated 13 million abortions every year, with many of those ordered by local authorities. Infanticide is also widespread in many rural areas. Those who violate the one child law can be fined up to £25,000.
The incident took place in Siming on China's east coast. But two decades of economic boom mean many middle class parents now earn enough to pay the fine to expand their family. For those without cash and connections like the Luos, gruesome summary justice is meted out. Forced abortions are banned under Chinese law, but this doesn’t prohibit or define late-term abortions. An official with the Siming district family planning commission said the procedure on Mrs Luo was undertaken voluntarily and that Mr Luo had approved it - a claim he denies.
The couple fear official retribution after making their ordeal public on a blog. Ordinary Chinese have expressed disgust at the Luos’ ordeal, labelling the family planning officials ‘cruel’ and ‘inhuman’.
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