Forced Abortion in China Triggers Angry Protests

Faith Issues

A forced abortion case exposed by the website 6-4 Tianwang, which posted a post-abortion photo of the mother lying on a hospital bed with the body of her seven-month-old fetus next to her, has triggered a chain of angry protests from around the world.

The June 3rd case in the city of Ankang, Shaanxi province, was first publicized by 6-4 Tianwang’s Huang Qi. The famous young Christian lawyer Zhang Kai will represent the mother, Feng Jianmei, a peasant from Yuping village, Zeng Family town in Zhenping county who was dragged by government officials to a hospital for the forced abortion. The case has focused worldwide attention on China’s one-child family planning policy and the violent government measures used to enforce it.

Zhang Kai was one of the lawyers who handled the famous “My father is Li Gang” case and the Qian Yunhui case in Zhejiang province, two cases that shocked the nation. In the first, a hit-and-run driver trying to escape the scene after hitting two students in front of Hebei University shouted that his father was a high-level official in the belief that it would get him immunity. In the latter case, a village leader trying to protect local residents’ rights in a land dispute case was crushed to death under a truck, believed by many to be a murder. Zhang Kai also represented Christians in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last October in a religious persecution case.

He recently wrote on his blog:
“The tragic Zhenping case violates the most basic conscience of mankind. This week, I will personally go to investigate and offer legal assistance to the plaintiff. If I exhaust all possible options domestically to seek a legal remedy, if China’s legal remedies all fail to realize the most basic demands (of the plaintiff), I will seek the help of international human rights groups, the United Nations and other groups, regardless of the political risk. I’ve already been in touch with the plaintiff. Out of basic humanitarian concern, I will travel in the next few days to Zhenping to offer legal assistance to the victims. I cannot accept that this kind of blatant murder in the land that we live in. To ignore it is, I think, to be no different than the murderer. This is a crime against humanity.”

ChinaAid and its founder and president Bob Fu have recently been monitoring the case of Cao Ruyi, the five-month pregnant mother in Changsha, Hunan province, who faced the threat of a forced abortion, and have been active in drawing Chinese and international attention to the case, leading to some recent positive developments. Fu called the Shaanxi case of the killing of Feng Jianmei’s seven-month-old fetus a shock and said, “We are convinced that the tragedy of this kind of human extermination happens daily in many different places. We are dedicated to the building of a Chinese society that respects life, love and justice.”

© 2012 CHINAaid