by Anne Roback Morse
An obstetrician in the
Shaanxi province of China was sentenced to death for child trafficking
this week. The 55 year old woman repeatedly told her patients that their
new born infant was either deformed or sick. She persuaded the new
parents to give up their children for adoption. Instead of adoption,
however, the infants were sold to human traffickers for profit. Doctor
Zhang Shuxia pleaded guilty to selling seven children, but she remains
the prime suspect in over 20 cases of missing children in the province.
Five other employees at the hospital were arrested as accomplices. This
recent case of Doctor Shuxia is a result of the two great disasters
caused by China’s birth control policy: the moral and the demographic.
The one-child policy provided
both the demand and the supply for the Doctor Shuxia’s trafficked
children. China’s restrictive birth policy fuels the demand for sons;
healthy male children have become prized treasures and are sold to
couples desperate for a male heir.[1]
Decades of sex-selective abortions mean females of reproductive age are
now scarce. China’s human-trafficking industry is booming to supply
both male heirs and female sex-slaves.
For Doctor Shuxia, China’s
birth control policy also provided the supply of children. Dr. Shuxia
told her patients that their newborns were sick or deformed. The parents
then gave up their supposedly sick child to be able to try again so
their only child would be a healthy one.[2]
In addition to creating both
the demand and the supply for children, China’s birth control policy
created the moral culture in which children became commodities to be
bought and sold.
China instituted its birth
control policy in 1979 to quell fears of overpopulation, but the
greatest effect of the one-child policy is not skewed demographics, but
rather a moral devastation inflicted upon the Chinese people. Doctor
Shuxia was twenty years old when the one-child policy commenced. Now
she, and several generations of Chinese children, have grown up in an
environment where the government uses fear and pressure to control the
most intimate elements of family life. Metal intrauterine devices
(IUDs), fines paid to the family planning police, government-monitored
menstrual cycles, and forced abortion—all of these have touched, at
least tangentially, every Chinese woman and man.[3]
And Doctor Shuxia has seen such suffering continue, not despite the
efforts of her government, but at its persistent behest. Indeed,
Population Research Institute documented officials of the Chinese
government "confiscating" and selling children who
were born in violation of the birth control policy. With such
government-sanctioned atrocities, we should be outraged, but we should
not be surprised when individual Chinese citizens likewise disrespect
life for their own profit.
Dr. Zhang Shuxia is now
sentenced to death for crimes which her government repeatedly committed
and cultivated. Ironically, the Beijing Times Newspaper recently
called for “fair punishment” for Dr. Shuxia saying that the death
penalty will “inject the authoritativeness of law into professional
ethics of doctors and will warn doctors not to take the wrong step that
brings them lifelong regret.”
The “one-child policy”
recently broadened the group of couples who are permitted to bear two
children. Despite this recent “loosening” of the policy, the Chinese
government still maintains strict control over reproduction. The change
in China’s birth control policy was merely a technical concession
stemming from demographic concerns, and there has been no real
improvement from a moral perspective: birth permits are still required,
sterilizations are coercively enforced, and illegal children are still
forcibly aborted.[4]
The Chinese government has
made a miniscule step in the direction of demographic recovery, but
China still has a long road of spiritual recovery ahead.
Keeping in mind the long-term
recovery of human rights in China, Population Research Institute
recommends against the death penalty for Doctor Shuxia. A legitimate
respect for life cannot start with a death in the name of retribution.
Instead, if China is serious
about establishing the legitimacy of its laws, it will not kill Dr.
Shuxia, but it will prosecute family planning officials who sell
children. If China is serious about injecting professional ethics into
medicine, it will not kill Dr. Shuxia, but it will stop forcibly
aborting its civilians. If China is serious about starting to rebuild
respect for life, it will not start with an execution.
[1] Jacobs, Andrew. "Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuels Boys' Abductions." Asia Pacific: The New York Times, 4 Apr. 2009. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/
[2] Dasgupta, Saibal. "China Doctor Held for Stealing, Selling Babies from Hospital." The Times Of India. N.p., 2 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2014. <http://articles.timesofindia.
[3] Mosher, Steven W. A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy. New York: Park Press, 1993.
[4] Tang, Didi. "Forced Abortion Highlights Abuses in China Policy." KPCC. N.p., 9 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2014. <http://www.scpr.org/news/
The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.
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