China cools "forced abortions on Taiwanese spouses" report Posted by Scott Manning on July 18, 2002 | Comments (0)

Beijing orders Chinese women who are married to Taiwanese to have abortions...That was the headline of an article posted yesterday by the Taipei Times. The article no longer exists on the Interet though. It has suddenly dissappeared.

The South China Morning Post has followed up the story with an article of their own quoting Taiwan as saying, "No forced abortions for mainland women married to Taiwanese men." The paper states that at least six pregnant Chinese women with Taiwanese husbands were "harassed or coerced" by Chinese officials to have abortions and undergo surgery to prevent them from having any more pregnancies.The paper reveals that this was not because of any negative relations between China and Taiwan, but merely a misunderstanding. The women already had one child. China forces abortions on women with one child in order to adhear to their "one-child" policy which is used to control the growth of its current 1.3 billion population.The paper makes this incident to be a case of mistaken policy quoting the Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation as saying, "women should not be asked to comply with China's birth policy because their babies will be given Taiwanese residency rights."With the dissappearance of the Taipei Times article and the extinguishing angle from the South China Morning Post article, the Chinese government has cooled a potential negative outlook on their country.