Advocate for China's girls warns about 'end' of 2-child policy

A longtime advocate for the girls targeted by abortion in China's "one-child" and "two-child" policies says that if China follows through on a plan to eliminate any restrictions on child-bearing, it will be a "momentous victory for human rights and a vindication of the application of international pressure as a strategy to affect change within that totalitarian regime."

China's communist regime, points out Reggie Littlejohn, president of the nonprofit Women's Rights Without Frontiers, has used tactics such as forced abortions and sterilizations on women to enforce its policy.

Bloomberg cited anonymous sources saying the State Council in China "has commissioned research on the impact of ending China's two-child policy, possibly within the next year."

In 2013, China relaxed the one-child policy it enacted in 1979, allowing families to have two children if one parent, rather than both parents, was an only child.

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The report quoted one of the sources saying the leadership "wants to reduce the pace of aging in China's population and remove a source of international criticism."

Littlejohn said that having "dedicated the last 10 years of my life to mounting 'international criticism' aimed at ending forced abortion and gendercide in China, I would of course rejoice over the end of all coercive birth limits in China."

"This would be a momentous victory for human rights and a vindication of the application of international pressure as a strategy to affect change within that totalitarian regime," she said.

But Littlejohn said she's waiting for the proof.

"First, the Chinese government just commissioned a study. It has not yet enacted the new law. I hope it does. Doing so would be a momentous step in the right direction," she said.

"As always when dealing with the Chinese Communist Party, there is a catch."

She noted the Bloomberg article states that China is planning "to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have."

"Many of the abortions in China are performed on unmarried women. China will not release how many of its 23 million abortions a year are forced," she said.

Some of China's "family planning laws" require marriage for a child to be born, Littlejohn pointed out.

"In some places, an unmarried woman who is pregnant may be forced to pay a 'social compensation fee' of up to 10 times her annual salary. I call these 'terror fines.' If she cannot pay the fine, she may be required to abort."

Or if children are born, they are "illegal" and cannot get a birth certificate, health care, education or a passport.

Littlejohn's organization long has fought China's practices of forced abortion, insisting it is the real "war on women." The forced-abortion policy, she said, has caused a surge in suicide and breast cancer, an imbalance between men and women, and a young population that is too small to sustain its senior citizens.

She's also spotlighted the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's newly released annual report, which documents that the forced-abortion policies are continuing in China.

The commission, chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was created by Congress in October 2000 to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China. It is required to submit an annual report to the president and the Congress.

Littlejohn noted "the sex ratio at birth reported by the Chinese government indicates that the selective abortion of baby girls continues under the new policy."

"When the Chinese communist government announced that they were instituting a Two Child Policy, the news media proclaimed that China had 'abandoned' or 'scrapped' the One-Child Policy," she recalled.

But that's "demonstrably false."

"Under the Two-Child Policy, single women are still forcibly aborted, as are third children. The 2017 Report from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China sadly confirms my predictions."

She said the "Population Control" section of the report reveals the existence of "provisions that require couples to be married to have children and limit them to bearing two children."

Her organization explained the background: "The Two-Child Policy was instituted because the Chinese government saw that it was heading into a dual demographic disaster. First, China has a steeply rising elderly population, coupled with a dwindling labor force unable to support it. According to the government-controlled People's Daily, by 2050, the elderly population in China will reach 483 million or one-third of China's total population.

"Second, the selective abortion of girls has continued. According to a National Bureau of Statistics Report cited by the CECC, the sex ratio at birth in 2015 was 113.5 males born for every 100 females born. Such a skewed ratio could only be achieved through sex-selective abortion."

Consequently, China has up to 37 million more men than women, which is driving sex-trafficking and sex-slavery crimes.

Littlejohn's group has set up an online petition on the issue and has created a video about "China's War on Women."

Women's Rights Without Frontiers also operates a "Save a Girl" campaign through which support is directed to mothers of girls facing financial hardship by raising the child.