China intends to boost the birth rate by reducing the number of abortions. In any case, this is what Chinese family planning suggests, which claims to want to “intervene” with “unmarried” women and adolescent girls to convince them not to have an abortion.
From our correspondent in Beijing, Stephane Lagarde
It is unclear exactly how the planning agency intends to “intervene”, but for now there is no question of banning abortion in China. According to the plan published at the end of January, the objective is improve reproductive health and to reduce unwanted pregnancies through education and propaganda campaigns aimed at encouraging Chinese people to have more children.
Nine million abortions
Because in recent years, demographic seismographs panic.
Fall of the #natality in #China. 10.4 births were registered per 1,000 inhabitants last year according to the National Bureau of Statistics. This is the lowest number of babies since the arrival of the Communist Party at the head of the country. https://t.co/fFC1bLj6HD
— Stephane Lagarde (@StephaneLagarde) January 17, 2020
According to figures from the National Health Commission, China recorded nearly 11 million births last year, and nearly 9 million abortions, including 4 million, or 40%, among teenage girls. It is this public of “unmarried” young women, as the official media say, that is targeted by this “intervention”.
Programs will focus on “traditional family values”, strengthening sex education classes that are often lacking in China, so that ” men respect and understand women “, indicates a feminist scholar from the University of Shanghai quoted by the South China Morning Post.
Stigma
The policy of the third child in China will not boost the birth rate without a change in mentalities and real equality between women and men in the workplace. Read the report @hrw : “Take maternity leave and you will be replaced immediately”. ? 1/ https://t.co/H7hP5GAvcX
— Stephane Lagarde (@StephaneLagarde) June 1, 2021
Faced with a birth rate that slumps, the authorities have already tried many things: the relaxation of the birth policy with the authorization to have a third child last May, the establishment of a thirty-day period before being able to divorce, extension of marriage leave up to thirty days or maternity leave in some provinces.
So far, these measures have not had the expected success. China’s aging population continues to accelerate. For women’s rights activists, who are often censored, care must be taken that the measures do not further stigmatize adolescent girls who wish to have an abortion. To revive births, they say, it would above all be necessary to change mentalities, reduce the weight of family traditions, which some young Chinese women no longer want, and start by increasing the duration of paternity leave.