China

China has one of the most admissible abortion policies in the world since as far back as 1957. Abortion is free with a simple a request. Since 1979, China's abortion policies have become more defined due to the "one-child policy", a response to the huge population growth. The basic features of the "one-child policy" include allowing urban couples to have not more then one child and rural couples to have not more then two children (with very strict circumstances at that). The policy in China has caused much global concern for women and children in China, as reports have shown that abuse has occurred against both.
Abortions are very common in China; a women having her second or even third child is strongly encouraged to receive an abortion, and it is readily available to her. Abortions in China, however, are often shocking and disturbing. Unauthorized pregnancies are aborted during any stage of the pregnancy. The fetus may be viable(able to survive outside of the mother) to perform an abortion. There are an estimated half a million abortions within the third trimester per year in China. Most of these children were viable when the abortion occurred, and most often the abortion was performed without the consent of the mother. Reports have shown that women are often brainwashed, imprisoned, and deprived of food until they agree to have an abortion. The Chinese government had tried to insert some control over the abortions, making them instituted only if there was some medical reason why the parents did not want the child, or if the mother was experiencing difficulties from a previous child.
The abortion procedures in China are unnerving to most people. Doctors commonly inject women with a substance called Rivalor, which causes direct congenative heart failure to the baby. The baby will die within the next few days, and then it is delivered dead. Another way of performing the abortion is injecting pure formaldehyde into the soft spot on the babys head so that as he or she is being delivered, the doctor can crush the babys skull with his foreceps. Other doctors use chokers which are similar to twisty garbage ties. They are placed around the baby's neck as he or she is being delivered; after about five minutes he or she has strangled to death.
Culture and tradition in China shows a preference for males in matters of importance. Thus, since the one-child policy was instituted in China, there has been a growing imbalance of the ratio of men to women. According to a 1992 survey, the sex ratio of newborns was 118 males for every 100 females. These statistics indicate what the world had already speculated, that there is a great amount of female infanticide occurring in China. Although the Chinese government is not willing to give too many details in response to these accusations, countless reports prove that they have merit.
China, among other Third World states such as India, has an unusually low female population due to female infanticide. However, abortion in China and countries alike are not necessarily gender based; often infants or fetuses are aborted based on a visible physical or mental abnormalities. Most frequently, however, females are the victims of infanticide. This unofficial policy has been around much longer then the one-child policy and longer then the People's Republic of China. A report taken by a missionary in the late 1800's found that 40 women, who collectively bore 183 sons and 175 daughters, had 126 sons who reached the age of ten yet 53 daughters that did the same. The women admitted to murdering 78 of their daughters. In recent times, however, the deaths of females have been credited mostly to the "one-child policy". Since the 1980's there has been a serious upward trend of the number of missing women. Couples are heavily penalized for having more then one child by having their pay cut and by having social benefits for their children and themselves were severely cut. Many parents, knowing that the child they have will be the only one able to look after them as they get older, want that child to be a son, say human rights campaigners.
A report from 1999 estimated that at this point there are now 111 million men in China who will be unable to find a wife. However, unofficially reports have stated that underreporting of female births are accounted for 43 to 75 percent of the difference in the population. Studies have also shown that it is harder for the government to keep track of births as women are moving around a lot more. Unannounced checks in villages in China have discovered some villages were undercounted by 40 percent. Even if a female baby is spared from death, she will face many hardships in life because she won't have any legal existence. She will often not be able to receive medical attention, enter school, or access certain social services provided by the government. If the female was reported but was not killed, often she is sent to an orphanage. Chinese state orphanages have been subject to much scrutiny for the unsanitary and unsafe conditions. Most of the girls in these orphanages do have parents but were abandoned for being of the wrong sex. It has been stated that the number of Chinese baby girls in orphanages has not been included in the ratio of men to women in China, creating a bigger gap between the two. These reports somewhat discount the theory of infanticide.
The Chinese government has publicly taken some huge steps to end female infanticide as well as abortion based on the sex of the fetus. Both the Marriage Law and the Womens Protection Law contain clauses which prohibit infanticide. The Womens Protection Law disallows discrimination of women who have female babies. The Maternal Health Care Law of 1994 prohibits the use of technology, such as an ultrasound machine, to identify the gender of the fetus. However, in 1999 between 500,000 and 750,000 Chinese females were aborted due to sex screening.
It is very difficult to give exact numbers of children that are victims of infanticide and abortion because data is often unreliable and ambiguous. It is probably likely that the number of infants killed a year would be in the hundreds of thousands (remembering that China is the most populated country in the world). The government of China says that after the institution of the one-child policy they have been able to prevent 250 million births.