BEIJING, China — A pregnant woman in southern China was detained, beaten and forced to have an abortion just a month before her due date because the baby would have violated the country’s one child limit, her husband claims.
Construction worker Luo Yanquan said his wife was taken kicking and screaming from their home by more than a dozen people on October 10 and detained in a clinic for three days by family planning officials, then taken to a hospital and injected with a drug that killed her baby.
Family planning officials told the couple they weren’t allowed to have the child because they already have a nine-year-old daughter, Luo said.
For the past 30 years, China has limited most urban couples to just one child in a bid to curb population growth and conserve its limited resources. China has the world’s largest population, with more than 1.3 billion people. Couples that flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.
The case is an extreme example of the coercive measures Chinese officials sometimes use to comply with the strict family planning regulations. Though illegal, police and judicial authorities often look the other way when forced abortion cases are reported and the heavily censored state media shy away from such news.
An official with the Siming district family planning commission, which oversees Luo’s neighbourhood, confirmed there was a record of Luo’s wife, Xiao Aiying, undergoing an abortion recently, but said the procedure was voluntary.
Luo denied the claims: “I never signed anything.
No one in our family did. I called the police, but they said family planning issues weren’t their responsibility. I want to sue, but lawyers I’ve asked here say they can’t help me and the media won’t report on our case.”
Luo set up a blog last week to let people know what had happened to his wife, and satellite broadcaster
Al-Jazeera posted a report about the couple’s case on its website on Wednesday.
Photos on the blog show a pained-looking, and clearly pregnant Xiao sitting on a hospital bed after the injection, but before the baby was stillborn
40 hours later. Other images show a large purple bruise on her arm and scratches on her leg, which Luo said were caused when family planning officials hit and kicked her as she struggled to get away.
Ordinary Chinese reacted with anger and disgust to Luo’s online account, posting comments that called the family planning officials cruel and inhuman.
Xiao delivered the dead baby on October 14, but remains hospitalised and may require emergency surgery to remove pieces of placenta still in her uterus, Luo said. The couple, both 36, were not informed of the sex o
