Incarceration and forced sterilization in China

Tuesday, April 20. 2010

Incarceration and forced sterilization in China

Lately it seems that some people are having a love affair with China's draconian policies. From Diane Francis who wrote the following in the Financial Post:

The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days....
China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet.

To Thomas Friedman who wrote this in the NY Times:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.

I am wondering if Francis and Friedman are referring to this story in the UK Times Online about China's "enlightened" "smart policy" that is incarcerating and forcibly sterilizing people for violating the one-child rule:

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.

The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.
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Zhang Lizhao, 38, the father of two sons, aged 6 and 4, said that he rushed home late last night from buying loquats for his wholesale fruit business to undergo sterilisation after his elder brother was detained. His wife had already returned so that the brother would be freed.

Mr Zhang said: “This morning my wife called me and said they were forcing her to be sterilised today. She pleaded with the clinic to wait because she has her period. But they would not wait a single day. I called and begged them but they said no. So I have rushed back. I am satisfied because I have two sons.”

Thousands of others have refused to submit and officials are continuing to detain relatives, including elderly parents, to force them to submit to surgery. Those in detention are required to listen to lectures on the rules limiting the size of families.

If this is "smart" and "enlightened," I will take dumb and in the dark any day of the week.

What I found almost as disturbing as the article are the comments where people seem to think that forced sterilization, especially of the less worthy members of society, is not just morally acceptable, but a GOOD idea:

Good idea - we could do with some of that on a council estate near here....there are some families that have never worked, they have children who will never work and they breed like mice to enable the rest of us to keep them in the double council houses with free tax perks and the like -

Sounds like a good idea to me - 1st of all I would sterilise all of the people who want Gordon Brown to run another term as PM. If they cannot see that once the election is over he will be back to ignoring what the people who elected him want, taxing us to the hilt and wasting it on more social engineering, and breaking all manifesto pledges they are not intellegent enough, and under any other Darwinian society would not be fit to breed the next generation.

Whilst I cannot agree to the chinese approach on this issue, I must say that it should be applied to some in the UK. Those living off the state should be limited so the rest of us do not have to pay for their irresponsibility.

People should not have as many children as they want. That is selfish. You may not want the state to interfere but I'll bet that you want the state to pay. There has been one large familiy in the news recently who should be sterilised.

Hello!? Do we need to be reminded that the eugenics movement of the United States in the early 20th century that resulted in forced sterilizations of many Americans also lead to the Holocaust of Nazi Germany? Eugenics is back in vogue. Be careful what you wish for people because you just might get it.

Hat Tip: Jivin J

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Reproductive Technologies at 10:18 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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So, these are also the same enlightened people, we are to assume, who have radically skewed China's sex ratio through abandonment and selective abortion of girls? The same people who, even when they are pro-life for Chinese, are "satisfied" because they have two sons, not just two children?

#1 Robyn Broyles (Homepage) on 2010-04-20 13:01 (Reply)

The eugenics movement in the United States certainly didn't lead to the holocaust in Germany; that's absurd. The eugenics movement existed at the time both in Europe and the U.S., and had major proponents in both places. The way you have stated this suggest that the eugenics movement originated in the U.S. (not true) and that its presence in the U.S. was somehow causally related to what happened in Germany. Not true, not true.

#2 myself on 2010-04-21 15:40 (Reply)

Follow the link and read Edwin Blacks War Against the Weak. He did extensive research and found a direct link from the U.S. eugenics movement and Mengele and Nazi Germany. From his website:

"Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics."

#2.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2010-04-21 16:24 (Reply)

Excellent piece. I will be reblogging it on my two sites. In addition, your post provides excellent insight into this subject matter and forces us as a world to reflect on our beliefs as well.
Why we as a people allow and support this type of behaviour is well beyond me.
Excellent post

#3 Blaise (Homepage) on 2011-09-20 19:42 (Reply)

The "incovenient truth" IS that humans are overpopulating the world, and it affects everything: from personal quality of life to global warming.
Does that mean we should adopt China's policy of forced sterilization and selective abortion? Of course not.
For some reason, we have a tendency to jump to extremes.
But what if having only one or two children was encouraged through incentives such as tax deductions ONLY for the first two children. After that, if you choose to have more children, you need to be sure you can afford to support them. Why should families who choose to have small families have to pick up the tax burden for those who have six or eight children which they then often turn to the government to help support? Also, free birth control. And maybe free vasectomies for those men who choose that option.

If you are religiously opposed to these things, don't do it. But don't make all of society pay or your personal beliefs.

#4 Ellen on 2012-05-15 22:27 (Reply)

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