Faced with a catastrophic population explosion, in 1980 the government of China instituted an extreme policy of population control. Known as the one-child policy, it included brutal methods in violation of human rights, similar to many policies imposed on the Chinese by its government. As Liu maintains, once the policy was enacted “Chinese women were forced to undergo late-term abortions and tubal ligations. Newborn children were abandoned or killed” (46). The government contends sharply lowered fertility rates prove the policy’s effectiveness, when in reality it is an unjust and inhumane policy. It is a discriminatory, often brutal-in-its-impact form of population control, and for this reason should be abandoned by the Chinese government.
One of the biggest reasons the one-child policy is inhumane is because of historical valuations by the Chinese culture with respect to males and females. According to Short (et al.), “gender bias in family formation in China is well documented” (913). The superior status granted to the male and the inferior status granted to the female in Chinese society makes many parents kill or abandon a female child because of the one-child policy of population control. Such institutional policies as this only serve to reinforce and perpetuate greater discrimination against women, long a sore spot in China’s record of human rights violations. As Short (et al.) confirms, “Patterns of abortion, mortality, and abandonment indicate that, in the aggregate, girls are less welcome family members” (913).
The one-child policy in China is also an unjust policy. To illustrate how it is unjust, we can compare it to the feared injustices of another controversial policy – cloning. Many are opposed to cloning because they feel the wealthy would have an enormous advantage in controlling society and, ultimately, what kinds of people populate it. With the one-child
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