China's Population Control Cast Study

Case Study: China’s Population Control In 1979, China passed their One-Child policy in an effort to decrease their major overpopulation issue. This policy prevents most couples from having more than one child, although there are exceptions. Most ethnic minorities, such as the Hui, are allowed to have two children, & those that are an ethnic minority & live in rural areas are allowed three. Although these people can, by law, have more than one child, it is still encouraged that they choose to have only one. This policy has prevented approximately 250 million births, according to Laura Fitzpatrick of TIME Magazine. Although China’s One-Child policy is helping to reduce overpopulation, it is also causing many unethical practices, making it more detrimental to the population than beneficial. These ethical issues are important because they could affect other countries in the future, including our own. In this essay, forced sterilization & abortion, a growing gender imbalance that causes trafficking & neglect of female children, the growing aging population, which doesn’t have enough young people to care for them, consequences of not following the law, & possible solutions to these ethical issues will be addressed. The first ethical issue is forced sterilization & abortion. During the past week, dozens of women in southwest China have been forced to have abortions even as late as nine months into the pregnancy, according to evidence uncovered by NPR. China's strict family planning laws permit urban married couples to have only one child each, but in some of the recent cases — in Guangxi Province — women say they were forced to abort what would have been their first child because they were unmarried. The forced abortions are all the more shocking because family planning laws have generally been relaxed in China, with many families having two children. Liang describes how they told her that she would have to have an abortion, "You don't have any more room for