[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 103 (Wednesday, July 11, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1227-E1229]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




FORCED ABORTION AT 7 MONTHS OF FENG JIANMEI SPARKS GLOBAL OUTRAGE--AND 
                                CONCERN

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 11, 2012

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, China's one-child policy in 
effect since 1979 is state sponsored murder and constitutes massive 
crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Nazi war crimes tribunal 
properly construed forced abortion as a crime against humanity--nothing 
in human history compares to the magnitude of China's 33 year assault 
on women and children.
  Abortion is a weapon of mass destruction. Millions have been 
exterminated.
  Today in China, rather than being given maternal care, pregnant women 
without birth allowed permits are hunted down and forcibly aborted. 
They are mocked, belittled, and humiliated.
  In recent days, the exploitation and forced abortion at seven months 
of Feng Jianmei has sparked global outrage--and deep concern for her 
welfare and that of the women of China (In early July, the European 
Parliament ``strongly condemned'' China's one child and forced abortion 
policy). While Feng remains in a hospital--she calls it a prison--her 
husband, Deng, has been beaten. Feng's gross mistreatment however is 
far too commonplace.
  Feng Jianmei was forced to undergo an abortion on June 2nd, seven 
months into her pregnancy. Media reports indicate that local officials 
in northwestern Shaanxi Province held Ms. Feng for three days, 
blindfolded, and coerced her to consent to the abortion. Even with the 
supposed consent, it took five men to hold her down and administer the 
drug that induced the 48 hour labor. The injection was given directly 
to the child's head.
  Ms. Feng's husband, Deng, posted graphic photos of his wife and the 
dead baby online, embarrassing the government. Deng Jicai, Mr. Deng's 
sister, said her brother and sister-in-law had refrained from speaking 
to media but decided to speak to German reporters who traveled to 
Shaanxi when the government did not produce investigation results as 
promised.
  Ms. Deng reported to the media that the local government organized a 
backlash against the family members, calling them traitors and keeping 
them under surveillance, apparently angered over the family's contacts 
with journalists. Local residents took a long bus ride to the hospital 
where Ms. Feng was recovering from the abortion and demonstrated with 
banners reading, ``beat the traitors soundly and expel them from 
Zengjia township!'' Family members claim that the demonstration seemed 
to be a campaign organized and funded by the local authorities but made 
to look like a spontaneous public gesture. Mr. Deng reportedly also was 
beaten and labeled a traitor for speaking out about the crime.
  The China Daily reported that there was no legal basis for the fine 
of $6,300 for the second pregnancy that Ms. Feng refused to pay. The 
local government also has admitted that Ms. Feng's legal rights were 
violated. Publicity surrounding the forced abortion prompted the firing 
of two local officials and warnings or demerits being issued against 
five others.
  Mr. Deng escaped from the hospital where both he and his wife were 
being forcibly detained. He traveled to Beijing and hired a lawyer to 
sue the local government. Mr. Deng's location is now unknown, but it is 
believed that he is in hiding. Ms. Feng is still being held at the 
hospital.
  The lawyer, Zhang Kai, said recently that he has sent a legal request 
on behalf of Feng's husband, Deng Jiyuan, asking local police and 
prosecutors to investigate criminal infractions in the case. Deng also 
is seeking unspecified compensation from the government, Zhang said.
  The widespread circulation of the photos posted by Mr. Deng has 
prompted renewed debate in China and the world regarding the one-child 
policy, possibly including within the government itself. Researchers 
with a center affiliated with China's State Council, the equivalent of 
China's cabinet, argued in an essay published in the China Economic 
Times newspaper on July 3, 2012, that China should adjust the one-child 
policy ``as soon as possible'' to head off a potential demographic 
crisis.

[[Page E1228]]

  The Wall Street Journal on July 6th also reported that a group of 
prominent Chinese scholars issued an open letter on Thursday calling 
for a rethink of the country's one-child policy. The group argued that 
the policy in its current form is incompatible with China's increasing 
respect for human rights and need for sustainable economic development. 
The letter comes less than a month after Feng's photo and story ignited 
public anger.
  ``The birth-approval system built on the idea of controlling 
population size as emphasized in the current `Population and Family 
Planning Law' does not accord with provisions on the protection of 
human rights contained in the nation's constitution,'' the authors of 
Thursday's letter wrote, adding that a rewriting of the law was 
``imperative.''
  The list of signatories to Thursday's letter included several high-
profile figures, including Beijing University sociologist Li Jianxin 
and Internet entrepreneur James Liang. ``This is a time during which 
people all over the world have realized there are problems with the 
[one-child] policy,'' Mr. Liang, the co-founder and chief executive of 
Chinese online travel site Ctrip.com, told The Wall Street Journal. Mr. 
Liang, who has spent the past five years pursuing a Ph.D. in economics 
at Stanford University and just published a book challenging the notion 
that China has too many people, said he has felt a recent opening up of 
discussion around the one-child policy.
  Mr. Liang, who advocates a complete dismantling of the family-
planning system rather than a two-child system put forward by others, 
said he initially became interested in the one-child policy when he 
came across research showing that innovation and entrepreneurship are 
dominated by young people. He said he feared a shrinking of the 
population of young people would hamper the country's efforts to evolve 
beyond being merely the world's factory. ``From an economic 
perspective, the one-child policy is irrational. From a human-rights 
perspective, it's even less rational,'' Mr. Liang said.
  Earlier this week, I heard testimony from Guo Yangling, who like 
Feng, will tell us how she suffered a brutalizing late term forced 
abortion:

       Heading out to buy breakfast . . . I was stopped by an 
     older woman in her 50s who asked me if I had a `birth 
     permit.' I said no . . . Then, two staff members from the 
     Family Planning Commission came and asked me where I was 
     from, where I lived and what my name was . . . I tried to 
     walk away but they wouldn't let me go . . . `Help, somebody!' 
     But no one came to help. Then two vans arrived, their doors 
     opened and people sitting inside . . . `Get in quickly.' I 
     refused and said, `I don't know who you are, why you are 
     asking me to get into your vehicle and where you are taking 
     me?' They said, `You will know after you get in' . . . On the 
     road, in an attempt to save my baby who would soon be 
     arriving in this world, I reached my hand for the van door. 
     They grabbed me and held me down on the van floor, yanking my 
     hair and trampling my limbs and body . . . I screamed again 
     `murder,' only to have a cloth used to wipe cars stuffed into 
     my mouth . . . I got out, I was brought to the second floor 
     of the building. There, I saw a number of female victims 
     sitting on the benches in the corridor, their eyes filled 
     with tears of anxiety, terror and sadness . . . a woman 
     dressed in white and wearing a surgical mask told me to get 
     on the delivery bed immediately. I refused, so they pinned me 
     down on the bed by force. After the person in white pressed 
     my belly with her hands and felt the position of my baby's 
     head, she stuck a big, long, fatal needle deep into my 
     abdomen . . . By then, my unborn baby had already been 
     murdered and I lost heart.

  This is the grim reality of the one-child-per-couple policy. As we 
have known for three decades, there are no single moms in China--except 
those who somehow evade the family planning cadres and conceal their 
pregnancy. For over three decades, brothers and sisters have been 
illegal; a mother has absolutely no right to protect her unborn baby 
from state sponsored violence.
  The price for failing to conform to the one-child-per-couple policy 
is staggering. A Chinese woman who becomes pregnant without a permit 
will be put under mind-bending pressure to abort. She knows that ``out-
of-plan'' illegal children are denied education, health-care, and 
marriage, and that fines for bearing a child without a birth permit can 
be 10 times the average annual income of two parents, and those 
families that can't or won't pay are jailed, or their homes smashed in, 
or their young child is killed. If the brave woman still refuses to 
submit, she may be held in a punishment cell, or, if she flees, her 
relatives may be held and, very often, beaten. Group punishments will 
be used to socially ostracize her--her colleagues and neighbors will be 
denied birth permits. If the woman is by some miracle still able to 
resist this pressure, she may be physically dragged to the operating 
table and forced to undergo an abortion.
  Her trauma, like Feng and Guo, is incomprehensible. It is a trauma 
she shares, in some degree, with every woman in China, whose experience 
of intimacy and motherhood is colored by the atmosphere of fear. The 
World Health Organization (WHO) reports staggering 500 female suicides 
per day in China. China is the only country in the world where the 
female suicide rate is higher than the male, and according to the 
Beijing Psychological Crisis Study and Prevention Center, in China the 
suicide rate for females is three times higher than for males.
  The result of this policy is a nightmarish ``brave new world'' with 
no precedent in human history, where women are psychologically wounded, 
girls fall victim to sex-selective abortion (in some provinces 140 boys 
are born for every 100 girls), and most children grow up without 
brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles or cousins.
  Over the years I have chaired 37 congressional human rights hearings 
focused in whole or in part on China's one-child policy. At one, the 
principal witness, Wuijan, a Chinese student attending a U.S. 
university testified about how her child was forcibly murdered by the 
government. She said, ``[T]he room was full of moms who had just gone 
through a forced abortion. Some moms were crying. Some moms were 
mourning. Some moms were screaming. And one mom was rolling on the 
floor with unbearable pain.'' Then Wuijan said it was her turn, and 
through her tears she described what she called her ``journey in 
hell.''
  At another hearing, a woman who was the director of a family planning 
clinic in Fujian said that by day she was a monster, by night a wife 
and mother of one.
  Women bear the major brunt of the one-child policy not only as 
victimized mothers. Due to the male preference in China's society and 
the limitation of the family size to one child, the policy has directly 
contributed to what is accurately described as gendercide--the 
deliberate extermination of a girl--born or unborn--simply because she 
happens to be a girl.
  As a result of the Chinese government's barbaric attack on mothers 
and their children, there are some tens of millions of missing 
daughters in China today. It has been noted that the three most 
dangerous words in China today are: ``it's a girl!''
  Because of the missing girls--China today has become the human sex 
trafficking magnet of the world. Women and young girls from outside the 
country are being sold as commodities throughout China--a direct 
consequence of the one-child policy.
  I am the author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, a 
comprehensive law to prevent trafficking, prosecute traffickers and 
protect victims.
  One provision of the law requires an annual assessment of every 
country. According to this year's TIP Report released on June 19th:

       China's birth limitation policy, coupled with a cultural 
     preference for sons, creates a skewed sex ratio in China, 
     which served as a key cause of trafficking of foreign women 
     as brides for Chinese men and for forced prostitution.
       The government took no discernible steps to address the 
     role that its birth limitation policy plays in fueling human 
     trafficking in China, with gaping gender disparities 
     resulting in a shortage of female marriage partners. The 
     government failed to take any steps to change the policy; and 
     in fact, according to the Chinese government, the number of 
     foreign female trafficking victims in China rose 
     substantially in the reporting period. The Director of the 
     Ministry of Public Security's Anti-Trafficking Task Force 
     stated in the reporting period that ``[t]he number of foreign 
     women trafficked to China is definitely rising'' and that 
     ``great demand from buyers as well as traditional preferences 
     for boys in Chinese families are the main culprits fueling 
     trafficking in China.

  A June 26th op-ed in The People's Daily--the official newspaper of 
the Chinese Communist Party--shed light on the emerging demographic 
catastrophe that is China.
  The article titled ``Leftover men to be a big problem'' admits that 
there is a ``bachelors'' crisis that will ``trigger a moral crisis of 
marriage and family'' and the ``continual accumulation of the number of 
unmarried men will greatly increase the risk of social instability.''
  At a congressional hearing I chaired last September BYU Professor 
Valerie Hudson, author of Bare Branches: The Security Implications of 
Asia's Surplus Male Population, testified that ``by year 2020 young 
adult bare branches--ages 15-34 will number approximately 23-25 million 
. . . the foremost repercussions will be an increase in societal 
instability, marked increases in crime, crimes against woman . . . and 
the formation of gangs . . .''
  Nicholas Eberstadt, a world-renowned demographer asks, ``What are the 
consequences for a society that has chosen to become simultaneously, 
more gray and more male.''
  In her assessment for security and potential war, Professor Hudson 
testified ``faced with worsening instability at home, and an unsolvable 
economic decline at home (as China ages) China's government may well be 
tempted to use foreign policy to `ride the tiger'

[[Page E1229]]

of domestic instability. The twin themes of anti-Japanese feeling and 
unfulfillment of China's reunification with Taiwan will be deeply 
resonant to much of the population of China. In the next two or three 
decades, we are likely to see observable security ramifications of the 
masculinization of China's growing young adult population, especially 
combined with an understanding of the consequences of global aging . . 
.''
  Last August Vice President Joe Biden visited China, and told the 
audience that he was well aware of and ``fully understood'' the one-
child policy, and that he was not ``second guessing'' the State for 
imposing it. Can you imagine what the public reaction would be if the 
Vice President had said that he ``fully understands'' and is not 
``second guessing'' copyright infringement and gross violations of 
intellectual property rights?
  The one-child-per-couple policy is the most egregious, vicious attack 
on women ever. For the Vice President of the United States to publicly 
state that he fully understands the one child policy and then say he 
won't second guess it is unconscionable, and sells out every mom in the 
PRC.
  Although Vice President Biden attempted to modestly backtrack on his 
extraordinarily callous comment about the policy, his voting record as 
a Senator shines a spotlight on his long-held disregard for the 
severity of this human rights violation. On September 13, 2000, he 
joined 52 other senators in defeating an amendment by then-Senator 
Jessie Helms condemning the one-child policy. Then-Senator Biden 
reportedly did so because he was concerned that condemning China on 
fundamental human rights would interfere with the normalization of 
trade relations.
  Not only is the Obama administration turning a blind eye to the 
atrocities being committed under the one-child policy, but it is even 
contributing financial support--contrary to U.S. law--to the United 
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Twenty eight years ago--on May 9, 
1984--I authored the first amendment ever to a foreign aid bill to deny 
funding to organizations such as the UNFPA that are complicit with 
China's forced abortion and involuntary sterilization policy. It 
passed. After all these years, it is astonishing that policy makers--
including and especially the Obama administration--remain indifferent 
or worse, supportive, of these massive crimes against women and 
children. The Obama administration has long enabled this cruel policy 
by its silence and financial support to the tune of over $165 million 
to the UNFPA, an organization that supports, plans, implements, defends 
and whitewashes the Chinese government's brutal program.
  On one of several trips to Beijing, I challenged Peng Peiyun--then 
China's director of the nation's population control program--to end the 
coercion. Madame Peng told me that the UNFPA was very supportive of the 
one-child-per-couple program and that the UNFPA adamantly agrees with 
her that the program is voluntary and that coercion doesn't exist.
  For over 30 years, the UNFPA has consistently heaped praise on 
China's population control program and repeatedly urged other countries 
to embrace similar policies.
  A few years ago, the UNFPA and the Chinese government rolled out the 
red carpet and hosted high level diplomats from Africa including health 
ministers to sell ``child limitation'' policies. Despite the fact that 
China's enforcement mechanism relies on heavy coercion and its aging 
population will soon implode its economy, some African leaders seem to 
have taken the bait. Limitations on the number of children a mother may 
carry to term are under active consideration throughout the 
subcontinent.
  And the UNFPA has tried to impose China-like child limitation 
policies on other nations as well, including the Philippines.
  Finally, in 2000, I wrote a law--The Admiral James W. Nance and Meg 
Donovan Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal years 2000 and 
2001.
  Section 801 of Title VIII of that Act still in effect today requires 
the Secretary of State not to issue any visa to, and the Attorney 
General not to admit to the United States, any foreign national whom 
the Secretary finds, based on credible and specific information, to 
have been directly involved in the establishment or enforcement of 
forced abortion or forced sterilization.
  Owing to a glaring lack of implementation, only a handful of abusers 
of women have reportedly been denied visas to the U.S. That must 
change.
  Lastly I thank each of our witnesses, who testified at a hearing I 
held earlier this week on this issue, for speaking out on this 
important topic.

                          ____________________