Posted on 07/19/2002 11:01:47 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Chinese women married to Taiwanese men are being ordered to have abortions or sterilization surgery during visits to the mainland to comply with China's controversial "one-child policy."
At least six of those women report that family planning officials forced them to undergo pregnancy tests in recent months, according to the Taiwanese body that deals with mainland relations, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).
SEF legal services director Patricia Lin said by phone from Taipei Friday that those who were deemed to have violated the "one-child" rule - by getting pregnant after already having a child - were also fined and threatened with further action if they had more children.
At least one woman paid the stipulated fine of 2,500 yuan ($302), Lin said. Children's identification cards were confiscated, too.
The women said they were told either to have abortions or, in the case of those who already had two children, to have surgery to have their fallopian tubes cut, tied or sealed to prevent further pregnancies.
Even in cases where a woman was pregnant for the first time, family planning officials had instructed her to have an abortion on the grounds she had not applied for government permission to give birth - reportedly a stipulation on the mainland.
Lin said she could not say whether any of the six actually had an abortion, because the women ordered to do so kept that information "private."
What was happening was "totally wrong," she said. The SEF has now written to its mainland equivalent, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, to urge an end to the practice.
The letter had drawn the mainland body's attention to the fact that the children of Chinese women married to Taiwanese husbands were eligible for Taiwanese permanent residence registration, "so they won't infringe the one-child policy."
"The Chinese government [already] knows this," Lin said, adding that she thought the problems might be happening mainly in rural areas where family planning officials were unaware of the situation.
While it was not clear whether the "one-child policy" was being enforced more rigorously, prior to the latest six cases fewer similar incidents were reported. Lin said the SEF had recorded two in 2000, one in 1999 and two in 1995.
The foundation has warned other Taiwan-based Chinese brides to prepare for harassment if they plan to visit the mainland. Lin said an estimated 100,000 Taiwanese were married to spouses from the mainland, and most lived in Taiwan.
The letter to the mainland association stated that cases like this could be detrimental to cross-straits relations.
The SEF exists as a semi state-funded organization authorized by the Taiwanese government to handle relations with the mainland, in the light of the government's policy of having no formal relations with Beijing.
Its mainland counterpart has a similar function, as Beijing also shuns official contact with Taipei. Communist China considers the capitalist island nation a renegade province and has threatened to use force if necessary to block any moves toward further independence.
Funding dispute
The reports from Taiwan come at a time the Bush administration is grappling with the issue of federal funding for a U.N. agency involved in Chinese population programs.
A 1985 amendment to foreign appropriations legislation denies federal funding to any organization supporting or taking part in forced abortion or involuntary sterilization programs.
After pro-life groups charged that U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) programs in China were tolerating coercive aspects of the "one-child policy," the administration last January froze $34 million earmarked for the UNFPA for the current year.
The State Department in May sent a three-person team to China to investigate the claims. It returned and submitted its report, which has yet to be released.
Pro-UNFPA members of Congress said this week the White House may be withholding the report because - they suspect - it had found no substance to the pro-lifers' allegations.
Concerned that President Bush may reject the report, 48 lawmakers, mostly Democrats, signed a letter to the president asking for an explanation for the funding holdup.
"We fear that this [reported] decision is being made based not on the facts, or on what is in the best interests of the lives of women, but rather on political calculations," said the letter, dated July 15.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Monday he was in no position to give details about the report, as "no final decision on the funding" had been made.
Earlier, the Population Research Institute - which spearheaded a campaign calling on Washington to "zero-fund" the UNFPA - expressed skepticism that the State Department delegation would be able to make an accurate assessment of the situation on the ground in China.
Any team sent with Beijing's permission and which planned to operate openly in the country would not have "a snowball's chance in hell of finding accurate information," PRI president Steve Mosher said at the time the trip was announced.
The PRI itself sent undercover investigators to China last September. It said those investigators had taken more than two dozen witness statements testifying to "rampant and unrelenting" abuses in the UNFPA's China program.
The U.N. program itself has strongly denied that it supports coercion in China, saying its work there aims to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
"The Chinese government [already] knows this," Lin said, adding that she thought the problems might be happening mainly in rural areas where family planning officials were unaware of the situation.
I note your graphic in post #3, and it is pointing to something.
When one looks at the activism exhibited by the NOW, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood types, the unceasing attempts to link the US to the UN, and the lobbying of the pro-abortionists to have their programs included in the UN budget, it is clear where they want to take us.
The situation in China is an ominous foreshadowing of what the Sangerite totalitarians have in store for the rest of us. Reproductive Control. Population control. These people are anything but being for 'choice', it's just more propaganda from genocidal freaks trying to foist their 'Brave New World' upon us.
I assure you and everybody else that there will come a day with these people where you won't have a choice.......and one needs only to look at China to see the future.
These people are the worst society has to offer; they must be opposed at every turn. They are the most demonic, unrepentant murderers you'll find anywhere.
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