Chinese health workers

Michelle Bradt
Current Events 1

An article on the BBC News website from September 2005 reports that Chinese health workers, specifically in the city of Linyi in the eastern province of Shadong, have been arrested or “sacked” for performing forced sterilization and abortion procedures. This is an ongoing issue in China, and recently BBC released an article covering the trial of a man, Chen Guangcheng, who has been an activist in this issue and who was last year detained for 30 hours for such activism.
Population growth policies and laws in China have been in place for about 25 years now, and include giving incentives to couples in urban areas for having only one child, and to couples in rural areas for having two. These laws, though I believe they were good hearted in their intent, have become a source for quashing what I believe are women’s natural rights. I am not in a position to judge whether that culture is wrong or right to control, or attempt to control, population growth, but once any woman’s body is violated without her consent, it becomes a strong reason for activists to jump on the issue.
Forcing any woman to have an abortion or to become sterilized is clearly wrong in itself, but it is an indicator of another issue for women: pronatalism. When women are defined by whether they have a child, it creates a stigma that they are unfulfilled if they are barren, sterilized, or simply don’t want children. If this mindset exists within societies, as it does in many if not most modern ones, it will continue to make a barrier between men and women and what they “should” or “should not” do. These gender biases only help to strengthen the inequalities between the sexes. Forcing women to become sterile or to have abortions, basically forcing them to release control of their own bodies and choices, is one step in the direction of a pronatalist ideology.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4262890.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5262748.stm