With the newly consolidated Reproductive Health Bill setting a stage for a Filipino Two Child Policy, will this tragedy be the Philippines in twenty years? . . .  

Excerpt of U.S. Congressional Testimony of Harry Wu regarding China’s One Child Policy[1]

“China’s one-child policy also engenders criminal behavior such as corruption, bribery and human trafficking. Corrupt family planning cadres and doctors abuse their authority to exact fines and accept bribes to give couples birth permit certificates, fake sterilization certificates, fake IUD checkup certificates, etc. Meanwhile, the surplus in female infants and the sex ratio imbalance has led to an increase in the trafficking of infants and women. It is estimated that after a decade, about 30 million Chinese bachelors will not be able to find a wife. This dire situation will result in instability even across the border and will have a negative influence on China’s neighboring countries.

 

The Chinese government uses the slogan "get rid of poverty and rush to well-to-do status" to persuade peasants to accept its forced family planning policy. However, little or no efforts are being invested in the areas of medicine, sanitation, education and employment for China’s rural population. No improvements have been achieved in the retirement and pension systems for China’s peasants. Instead, the government has used a huge amount of money and human resources to build up a strong contingent to implement its family planning policy.

 

Coercion in China’s family planning policy is not sporadic or unauthorized, but rather an essential tool used by family planning cadres to meet ambitious targets. Coercion is systemic, widespread, and appalling. As international law clearly stipulates, the right of families to choose the number and spacing of their children is clear and inviolable, and this right is clearly denied to Chinese citizens. As long as China’s one-child policy remains in place, women in China will continue to lack control over their own bodies and their own reproductive choices, and the state will continue to dictate when they will be fitted with IUD devices, sterilized, or forced to have an abortion. This is clearly a policy that should be abhorrent to the international community, and one that we must work to eliminate.

 

Tragedies due to the one-child policy continue to be played out one after the other, and the societal consequences of "family planning" are gradually manifesting themselves. If we are unable to put a stop to this problem, it means that we have still not been successful in terms of our efforts to promote human rights in China. The cruel and unjust methods the Chinese government carries out to enforce its population policy constitute a human rights violation of the worst kind. I call on the Chinese government to end its brutal practices of forced population control and seek to implement voluntary and non-violent population programs. And I urge the American people, the United States Congress, and the U.S. government to help put a stop to China’s barbaric policies.”

 

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[1] Full text of December 14, 2004 testimony can be found  by visiting:   http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/archives/108/wu121404.htm