According to Wikipedia.com the War on Women is an “expression used in United States politics that characterizes certain Republican Party policies as a wide-scale assault on women’s rights, especially reproductive rights.” This rhetoric is most often used to attack Conservatives, Christians, and Republicans. It attempts to mischaracterize pro-life legislation, and the fight of many convicted religious and non-religious people against the HHS contraceptive mandate which coerces companies and organizations to pay for medical services that they deem morally offensive. This is hardly an “attack” on anything.
The real “wide-scale assault on women’s rights, especially reproductive rights” is not happening inside the American political arena. The real offensive on women’s autonomy is happening across the ocean in China. This is what a “war on women” actually looks like:
Illegal pregnancies, forced contraception and forced abortions:
In China, it is illegal for a women to get pregnant without a birth permit. There is an army of family planning police who reserve not only the right to invade a woman’s home if they suspect an “illegal” pregnancy, but the right to invade her womb. When women are found to be carrying an “illegal” pregnancy, they are routinely arrested, fined and forced to abort their wanted children.
A report from “Women’s Rights Without Frontiers” brings these atrocious human rights violations to light. Read this story about how a mother who was pregnant with her first child, but lacked a birth permit, was dragged into the streets, and forced to have an abortion:
On October 5 of 2008, an article appeared in the South China Morning Post about a young woman, Jin Yani, who was drifting off to sleep one night when the family planning police smashed the lock to her front door and dragged her out of her house in her nightclothes, screaming and terrified. Her crime: getting pregnant without a birth permit. Her punishment: forced abortion, even though she was nine months pregnant, and this was her first child. Jin Yani knelt on the floor of the family planning center and begged the police to let her keep her baby. They dragged her crying and screaming, and five people held her down on the hospital bed as they ripped off her clothes and injected saline solution with a long needle through her womb and into the full-term fetus to terminate it. The dead baby was extracted on September 9, 2000. When her husband, Yang, returned from his business trip, he rushed to the hospital to find Jin Yani purple and near death from blood loss. She spent 44 days in the hospital because of severe hemorrhaging. Now, she is infertile.
Talk about a wide scale assault on reproductive rights!
Sex-Selective Abortions:
Because of a cultural preference for boys, girls are aborted at a much higher rate than boys, especially when a family is limited to one child. In China, there are 117 boys born for every 100 girls. In certain regions of the country, this number increases dramatically. Sex selective abortions are technically illegal in China, but tracking and enforcing such a law is nearly impossible.
Suicide:
The World Health Organization reports that China has the highest female suicide rate in the world. Over 500 women in China commit suicide every day. Chinese women have an utter lack of autonomy in the most personal parts of their lives – could the high suicide rate be linked to this?
Fighting the War on Women: Women’s Rights Without Frontiers
This degradation of human life and liberty is so foreign to the American experience that it is almost impossible to believe that it is happening in the year 2014. Thanks to the work of Reggie Littlejohn and Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, these atrocious human rights abuses are coming to light.
One campaign organized by Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is happening right inside the borders of Communist China. It is working to combat gendercide, and bring hope to parents of baby girls. It is called the “Save a Girl Campaign”. Chinese field-workers provide mothers who are at risk of aborting or abandoning their baby girls a monthly stipend if they choose to keep their girls. This campaign is extremely effective and proves that these mothers, when offered both emotional and financial support will choose life for their daughters.
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is fighting the battle both inside China and in the international political arena. Littlejohn is bringing reports of forced abortion to the United States Congress, the United Nations, the European Parliament, The White House, and beyond. Watch Reggie Littlejohn speak about the violence that women experience China. Inform yourself, help to spread the word about the real war on women, and the great work that this organization is doing:
transformed the way we work with Indian Country; we have reorganized to better align our programs to maximize the independence of the elderly and people with disabilities; we have worked to reduce tobacco usage and obesity rates; we have reduced ethnic health disparities and are closer to an AIDS-free generation; and of course, we have successfully implemented the Affordable Care Act, the most historic reform of our health care system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid.
