I am president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers. Our mission is to end forced abortion and the sex-selective abortion of baby girls in China.
Although WRWF is not a religious organization, on a personal level, I am always guided by two Scriptures: Psalms 94:16 says, “Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?”
And Ephesians 5:11, which says: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
Yes, the “one-child” policy has now moved to the “two-child” policy, but it is still an inhumane example of coercive population control.
As blind activist Chen Guangcheng succinctly tweeted last year when the policy was changed, “This is nothing to be happy about. First the #CCP would kill any baby after one. Now they will kill any baby after two. #ChinaOneChildPolicy”
Any and all babies born out of wedlock — to unmarried women — are automatically considered illegal and are subject to forced abortion.
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And given the cultural bias toward boys, second children who are daughters are especially vulnerable to being aborted.
The horrible practice of forced abortion in China is why I founded Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.
This is about fighting China’s “war on women and girls.” To understand the suffering caused by forced abortion in China, watch our short video, “Stop Forced Abortion — China’s War on Women” (WomensRightsWithoutFrontiers.org/?nav=stop-forced-abortion).
China has an iron grip over the wombs of women. The Chinese Communist Party intrudes into the bedrooms and between the sheets of the families in China by requiring ultrasound checks to make sure women’s IUDs are still in place and paying informants who monitor women’s reproductive health.
The problem with the one-child policy or the two-child policy lies not in the number of children allowed. The problem lies with the coercive enforcement of the birth limit, whatever that limit might be.
Whether a couple is allowed to have one child or two children, it is a human rights atrocity to drag a woman out of her home in the middle of the night, screaming and pleading, to forcibly abort her pregnancy — and under certain circumstances, sterilize her — because she does not possess government approval.
Consider the scale of this atrocity: Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, some 55 million American children have been lost through abortion. Since China enforced the one-child policy in 1980, the Chinese Communist Party boasts that it has “prevented” more than 400 million lives. That number is more than the populations of the United States and Canada combined. The Chinese Communist Party has not released a statistic indicating how many of these abortions were forced.
Due to the sex-selection abortion trend in China, the current ratio of boys to girls is 117 boys to 100 girls. Gendercide exists in India, as well.
Between these two giant countries, one-third of the world’s women are dealing with a situation in which they are culturally coerced to abort or abandon their baby girls. It is a woman’s right to give birth to her daughter.
More than 200 million girls are missing (due to abortion and trafficking), which is more than the lives lost from all the wars of the 20th century. In fact, what is taking place is “gendercide.”
Let’s take a look at this brief video from ItsAGirlMovie.com. It explains why the three deadliest words in some parts of the world are “It’s a girl.”
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers now has boots on the ground in China to help rescue women who want to escape forced abortion and give birth to their babies. It’s called the “Save a Girl” campaign. (WomensRightsWithoutFrontiers.org/index.php?nav=end-gendercide-and-forced-abortion) Women’s Rights Without Frontiers also rescued two beautiful refugees, the daughters from an imprisoned pro-democracy dissident from China, and are raising them as our own daughters. The younger one, Anni, is a straight-A student and recently won a piano competition to play in Carnegie Hall. Her mother was almost forced to abort her when she was around seven months pregnant. Anni is an example of the beauty and brilliance lost every day in China through forced abortion and gendercide.
I will end with Proverbs 24:11-12, which says, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ’Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not requite man according to his work?”
• Reggie Littlejohn is founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, an international coalition combating forced abortions, gendercide, sexual slavery and sex trafficking in China and other countries. She has testified about these issues many times before Congress, as well as European, British and Irish parliaments. This article is derived from her April 9 remarks to the Wilberforce Weekend in Arlington, Virginia.
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