- 20 Feb 2023 21:55
#15265681
In a country like the U.S., abortion policy revolves around the individual woman's rights versus rights of the unborn human fetus.
But in an authoritarian Communist country like China, neither of these are really considerations. Instead it's all about whether the nation thinks that they need more or less babies being born, at a particular time.
Immediately after the war, in the 1950s, with widescale devastation and the fledgling new Communist country seeking to become more powerful and grow, abortion was banned in China, and women were pressured to have more children and big families.
Later, there were concerns about overpopulation, so in 1980 China implemented the "one child policy". Coming under pressure from the national government, many provincial level governments in China even began a policy of coercing and forcing women to have abortions. This reached a peak in the late 1980s to mid 1990s, with some documented cases up to as late as 2011.
link with some more information about that:
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php ... na.453061/
Almost comically, it looks like the Chinese government has now once again changed the course of its abortion policy.
China restricts abortions for 'non-medical purposes' - Al Jazeera, September 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/2 ... l-purposes
The Chinese government has just issued new guidelines restricting the number of abortions that can be performed.
Even before this, the government had already enacted policy excluding mothers with only one child from medical insurance and social welfare payments.
The country had already enacted strict measures aimed at preventing sex-selective abortions in 2006, and in 2018 the health authorities launched a campaign warning that the use of abortion to end unwanted pregnancies was harmful to women's bodies and risks causing infertility.
The new policy is believed to be in response to China's declining birth rate, which policymakers believe will cause demographic, economic and societal problems in China's future.
thread with more information about that here:
"China has an intractable demographic problem"
viewtopic.php?f=114&t=181410
China's National Health Commission data shows that between 2014 and 2018, there had been an average of 9.7 million abortions per year, rising about 51 percent from the 2009-2013 average, despite a relaxation of the "family planning" policies in 2015.
In other words, despite government reducing the pressures on women to have fewer children, women were actually having more abortions, probably in response to increasing urbanization and rapidly expanding job opportunities, mostly in factories with very long hours.
Another factor may have been that due to China's Hukou system, migrant workers would have to pay for their children's education, since their family does not have a permit to live in that area, which probably put more pressure on some of these people not to have children. There was a huge wave of people moving from other provinces to the big cities near the east coast for better economic opportunities during this time.
So first the Chinese Communist Party banned abortions, then they started forcing women to have abortions, and finally they have now begun to ban women from having abortions again.
But in an authoritarian Communist country like China, neither of these are really considerations. Instead it's all about whether the nation thinks that they need more or less babies being born, at a particular time.
Immediately after the war, in the 1950s, with widescale devastation and the fledgling new Communist country seeking to become more powerful and grow, abortion was banned in China, and women were pressured to have more children and big families.
Later, there were concerns about overpopulation, so in 1980 China implemented the "one child policy". Coming under pressure from the national government, many provincial level governments in China even began a policy of coercing and forcing women to have abortions. This reached a peak in the late 1980s to mid 1990s, with some documented cases up to as late as 2011.
link with some more information about that:
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php ... na.453061/
Almost comically, it looks like the Chinese government has now once again changed the course of its abortion policy.
China restricts abortions for 'non-medical purposes' - Al Jazeera, September 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/2 ... l-purposes
The Chinese government has just issued new guidelines restricting the number of abortions that can be performed.
Even before this, the government had already enacted policy excluding mothers with only one child from medical insurance and social welfare payments.
The country had already enacted strict measures aimed at preventing sex-selective abortions in 2006, and in 2018 the health authorities launched a campaign warning that the use of abortion to end unwanted pregnancies was harmful to women's bodies and risks causing infertility.
The new policy is believed to be in response to China's declining birth rate, which policymakers believe will cause demographic, economic and societal problems in China's future.
thread with more information about that here:
"China has an intractable demographic problem"
viewtopic.php?f=114&t=181410
China's National Health Commission data shows that between 2014 and 2018, there had been an average of 9.7 million abortions per year, rising about 51 percent from the 2009-2013 average, despite a relaxation of the "family planning" policies in 2015.
In other words, despite government reducing the pressures on women to have fewer children, women were actually having more abortions, probably in response to increasing urbanization and rapidly expanding job opportunities, mostly in factories with very long hours.
Another factor may have been that due to China's Hukou system, migrant workers would have to pay for their children's education, since their family does not have a permit to live in that area, which probably put more pressure on some of these people not to have children. There was a huge wave of people moving from other provinces to the big cities near the east coast for better economic opportunities during this time.
So first the Chinese Communist Party banned abortions, then they started forcing women to have abortions, and finally they have now begun to ban women from having abortions again.