As Prison Planet notes, China's one-child policy still stands, with no discernable protests from the "enlighened" West. We begin with a piece cited from the Epoch Times, which gives an account of an incident from June, in which a woman in her last weeks of pregnancy was kidnapped by representatives of the Birth Control Office, who brought her to a site where the unborn child was injected with poison. The story notes that she was of "advanced maternal age" (unexplained) but that the child was healthy.
Half a dozen men pushed the woman down on a bed and injected her with a drug to induce labor. The woman fought desperately and got away twice, but not the third time.
In the early morning of June 12, the woman had repeated pains in her abdomen. At around 6 a.m., she had a stillbirth. The injection had poisoned and killed the fetus. According to the doctor, immediately after the woman’s placenta was passed, she had a massive hemorrhage. She died after hospital staff attempted an emergency rescue.
Although the husband wasn't there, he was offered a paltry compensation, and she was immediately cremated, making the reader wonder when and how he actually learned what had happened.
Holy Week began with another documented case of murder, this time in Moshan, which is in the Shandong province of China:
Because the parents of the baby already had a child, they were hunted down and forced to comply with China’s draconian one child policy. The mother was injected with a poison that induced an abortion, but after the baby was “pulled out inhumanly like a piece of meat,” it was still alive and began to cry before doctors slung the defenseless child into a bucket and left it to die.
Trading rights with China, the current trade imbalance and national debt drives our foreign policy. Although millions of women are regularly abused in this way, and millions of babies snuffed out, it doesn't register on the financial spread sheet. On towards the Passion...
ADDENDUM: LifeSiteNews adds a sad footnote by passing along the news that approximately 500 Chinese women commit suicide each day. (There are some interesting conjectures as to why, but I admit I was sad to see that suicides among American men is higher.) The one-child policy may be part of it, but it's not necessarily because of women being robbed of motherhood --rather the fact that the policy crystalises the point that boys are preferred. They always have been, but perhaps the rising rate of sex-selection abortions targeting girls drives it home? Hard to tell, but sad all the same. Furthermore, with the sex imbalance growing and men unable to find wives, these statistics are only more alarming.
Comments
“People have realized that the complete removal of the feminine element from the Christian message is a shortcoming from an anthropological viewpoint. It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity."
This is just another of the unintended consequences of the cultural acceptance of contraception and abortion! Men's sexuality has been robbed of its creative essence. It is now viewed as something that imposes a burden on women (when conception happens to occur), something used to control women or something that is purely recreational. Why would men bother?? In taking away their responsibility, we've also robbed them of their significance! In the big picture of humanity, men have been made into nothing more than a nuisance women have to figure out how to control in order to bring about the next generation. Men don't see it as their task to protect the vulnerable because they see themselves as the vulnerable ones. A few well preserved vials of sperm would make men entirely obsolete in the world's ethos today!!
That is astounding Robin, and good for you for standing up. At the heart of that matter, I think, is even worse than a gender mixing message. There is an increased sharper and sharper focus on the "self." Solid Catholic teaching returns our focus away from ourselves to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The original sin, Eve denied her womanhood when she desired to be like "gods." Since the only god she knew was the Father. Where was Adam? He stood impotent... in other words, they were divorced. There's a young girl at Robin's son's high school who was just told that she is the center of the universe and it's a tragic disservice to her.
Ditto what Mary said! A lot of high schools have very poor math and science depts, for boys and girls. I also am educated as a chemical engineer, but chose to teach the two years before we had children because its hours were more suited to spending time with children. (I was looking ahead). When it came time and I was pregnant with our first, I realized that I did not want to leave him with someone else, and was able to stay home full time. I am not sure it would have been that easy if we were used to another engineering income and not just a private school teacher income. Also some of my first job offers were out on oil rigs - I had no interest in that at all even though I enjoyed my engineering classes and did well in them. No one discouraged me from an engineering job, on the contrary I got a lot of flack for my decision not to pursue an engineering career.
I've been lurking, but this is one that irritates me. Beats the heck out of me what these "barriers" are. I was educated as a chemical engineer, where 1/3 of our class was women. However, in electrical engineering, only 1 or 2 out of 30 were women. Is it possible that women are Just Not Interested in some areas? Nah, it must be The Man keeping us down so we must legislate (and, I agree -- when they say "legistlate", I hear "quota"). And actually, I have a friend that was also a chemical engineer. When she lost her job, she decided not to go back into engineering and started working from home so she could spend more time with her 3 kids. Also, if nothing else, there are all kinds of incentives for women to enter science and engineering -- scholarships not available to men, guaranteed housing on campuses that do not guarantee housing to the general population, etc. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that schools in general are not preparing students for the hard sciences. It is truly a sad state of affairs, the lack of science education these days.