Forcing the Issue

Today's The New York Times runs with a front-page story on forced abortions in China.  A woman is pictured whose child at around 36 weeks (a universally recognized point of viability) was killed by Chinese officials.  (Supposedly third-trimester terminations are illegal in this woman's province.)  The article reports on the growing push by some segments to end the policy.

The Chinese government insists that it will maintain its one-child policy, which was begun in 1980 and is a cause of many terminations in China.  The government attributes the policy to avoiding 400 million births.  Assuming that only 1 out of every 1,000 -- that is, only 0.1% -- avoided births were so avoided by termination of the child, that still amounts to 400,000 deaths.

That amount of deaths might garner "epidemic" status if the issue were different, say, West Nile virus.  That hypothetical figure of 400,000, as large as it is, still is less than one-half of the actual number of abortions performed in the United States each year, for example, about 860,000 in 2006 which were aided by publicly funded family planning services.  For comparison, the Rawandan genocide in 1994 involved the murder of an estimated 800,000 people.  That was genocide and in one year, not a "political disagreement" and per annum.  Maybe the problem in China is an epidemic; apparently it is not at home.  To the child in utero, however, that abortion to end life is, well, forced.