China
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers (WRWF) has challenged a claim from All Girls Allowed (AGA) that said the Chinese government has banned forced abortion. WRWF maintains AGA has based its report on misleading government propaganda.
AGA based its statement on links to two documents and a call made to a family planning official who stated that ‘the change came from the top down’.
But a WRWF statement said that, although officially ‘banned’ in China for a long time, forced abortion continues to happen in China, and the press release from AGA undermines the movement to stop it.
WRWF states that both cited documents only talk about late-term forced abortions and don’t remove the financial and structural incentives that keep forced abortion in place.
Couples still face fines and job loss, based on whether they meet the birth, abortion and sterilisation quotas. WRWF said, ‘We need to keep the pressure on, not celebrate propaganda designed to take the pressure off’.
