Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is catching the ire of a women’s rights group over comments she made about China and forced abortion during Wednesday night’s third and final presidential debate.
It was during Clinton’s heated exchange with Republican rival Donald Trump that she said China “used to” perform forced abortions, a statement that appeared to frame the communist country’s acts against women in the past tense.
“I’ve been to countries where governments either forced women to have abortions, like they used to do in China, or forced women to bear children, like they used to do in Romania,” Clinton said. “And I can tell you: The government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families in accordance with their faith, with medical advice.”
Critics, though, noted that the problem of forced abortion in China is anything but remedied.
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Reggie Littlejoh, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, a group that works to stop forced abortion in China, responded to Clinton’s comments in a statement to The Christian Post.
“With all her experience as former Secretary of State, it is untrue and deeply disappointing for Hillary Clinton to put the Chinese government’s practice of forced abortion in the past,” Littlejohn said in the statement. “If she thinks that China no longer forces women to abort babies, she should explain that to a couple, surnamed Zhong, who in August of this year were forced to choose between an abortion at eight months or the loss of both of their government jobs.”
She continued, “Or she should inform He Liping, who was forced either to pay an impossible ‘terror fine’ of $39,000 or face abortion at six months.”
Littlejohn said China’s amended one-child policy — which now permits each couple to have two children — has not eased the problems women and families face inside the country, and said presidential candidates like Clinton “should not be stating or implying” that the horrific dynamic is no longer a problem.
“We need to keep the international pressure on the Chinese Communist Party until all coercive population control is eradicated,” she said.
Pro-life news site Life News also took aim at Clinton’s comments, saying she was “wrong” to seemingly insinuate that China no longer mandates forced abortion; the outlet echoed Littlejohn’s calls for increased pressure on China.
“U.S. leaders must not only continue to raise awareness about this horrific problem but also urge Communist China to abandon its abusive family planning policies,” the outlet proclaimed.
A BBC story back in May explored these issues as well, speaking with Chinese citizens who had been forced to either pay heavy fines or abort their babies, even late into a pregnancy. One women named Chen Huafen — who hid her second child from government officials for 12 years — said the government has been known to routinely harass those with more than one child.
“They used to come at night and take stuff away from families with more than one child,” she told the outlet. “Bicycles, sewing machines whatever they could lay their hands on, even our cows and pigs.”
Some say the amended two-child policy simply continues the same abusive behavior, fines and forced abortions once a couple has exceeded two kids.
As Faithwire previously reported, Clinton’s abortion comments were uttered during a heated exchange with Trump over late-term, partial-birth abortion, during which Clinton defended her opposition to a 2003 bill that banned the procedure.
(H/T: Christian Post)
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