In a world of its own, China flourishes in spite of its strict family-planning laws. A country where many of our products originate is also the source of untold misery. A special report by Abigail Haworth captures a photograph of a baby girl lying dead in a gutter of a busy road that no one gave a second glance to. After hours of people ignoring the baby that happened to be located in front of a government tax office, an old man placed a newspaper on top of the infant, picked her up, put her in a box, and dropped her in a garbage bin.
The nameless and unwanted newborn in this glimpse of cruelty and horror was only one of many as a result of the Chinese government’s attempt to decrease the birth rate in the country.
Some Chinese citizens are subject to crippling fines, sterilization, and other severe penalties if they try to have an illegal baby. Others, to avoid punishment, desert their illegal offspring.
Unfortunately, baby girls are considered less valuable than boys in rural, traditional parts of China. To the Chinese authorities, abandoned girls are merely worthless trash. I cannot understand why they have been able to proceed with this intolerable act of law since 1979.
Being female and born a year after this strict family-law was created, I thank God for not being born in China. What is even more disturbing is that 97.5 percent of all aborted fetuses in China are female. The Chinese government has population officials, or “abortion squads,” that regularly conduct midnight raids at homes of women suspected of becoming pregnant illegally. These squads drag offenders into custody and detain them until they submit to an abortion, even if they are eight or nine months pregnant.
Reading of the lethal formaldehyde injections that they use to kill babies made me feel pity for those who have chosen to be a doctor and must take a life that has no choice.
It isn’t just the choice of the unborn or born infant, but the mothers who bear these babies are also given no choice. There are an estimated 17 million girls “missing” from the Chinese population nationwide.
It is so terribly disturbing that so many of these tragedies are being ignored everyday that it makes me want to cry. I lost sleep over the night after I read this article, fearing that as I lay comfortable in my home another infant lay in the fate of China’s law.
Another baby girl will have a brief life, probably ending on the roadside like others by the time you read this article.
We are letting other parts of the world get away with murder. How would you feel if your child was holding a doll made from China? How would they feel if they knew China’s untold misery? Just think, the next time you purchase something that is made from China, you are exchanging goods with a world which contributes, but takes lives from those who will never see the world.