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BEIJING — When a self-taught lawyer and activist named Chen Guangcheng went public with reports of forced abortions and other abuses by family-planning officials in China's Shandong province, he became a local hero. He also became a state threat. Roughly a year later, despite international pressure, widespread support from lawyers and an acknowledgment from national officials that many of his disclosures were accurate, the 35-year-old Chen remains in custody. His case stands as a warning that being right is not a sure defense in a system wary of any challenge to its authority. On Monday, the blind activist's wife was...

An ultrasound image is a picture worth more than a thousand words when it comes to understanding key differences between the values that separate the United States and the People’s Republic of China. In the United States, ultrasound image technology has been instrumental in establishing the unborn child as a living, breathing, sensing person. Several states are in the process of enacting laws requiring abortion practitioners to offer pregnant women the chance to see an ultrasound image of their baby before performing an abortion. Congress is considering the Informed Choice Act, which allows pregnancy help clinics to receive federal grants...

BEIJING - China intends to make it a criminal offence to abort a female fetus, hoping to correct a major imbalance in the ratio of boys to girls born in the country. INDEPTH: China The practice is currently banned, but there are no criminal consequences if parents disobey the ban or doctors carry out such an abortion. Government figures show 119 boys are born for every 100 girls in China. Worldwide, fewer than 110 boys are born for every 100 girls. Boys tend to die from violence, accidents and disease at a higher rate than girls, so the ratio equals...

The countryside is plastered with slogans telling villagers that small families are the road to happiness and that daughters are just as good as sons but there is little evidence such sloganeering has changed the preference for boys. Government figures show 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls. Beijing want to reverse the imbalance by 2010.

Despite some changes, China's one-child family planning program remains a source of coercion, forced abortions, infanticide and perilously imbalanced boy-girl ratios, State Department officials said Tuesday.

Beijing, China -- Ji Huansheng enjoys the deep sleep treasured by parents of any four-month- old infant. Cradled on the mud bed of her village home, her peaceful face belies the trauma that makes her mother weep, and the drama of her short life. Only her unusual name hints at a tale to be told -- Ji Huansheng means "brought back to life by journalists". This is the miracle baby who refused to submit to the deadly enforcers of birth control, Chinese-style. They tried to abort her, but she survived. They took her from her parents and left her to ...

From: The Pro-Life Infonet (infonet@prolifeinfo.org) Reply-To: Steven Ertelt Subject: Taiwan Will Reward Childbirth, Unlike China Source: Agence France-Presse, Taiwan Economic News; October 15, 2002 Taiwan Will Reward Childbirth, Unlike China Taipei, Taiwan -- In an attempt to reverse the "continuously declining" birth rate in Taiwan, the nation's Ministry of the Interior and Council for Economic Planning and Development have proposed awarding couples who give birth to more than two children approximately $855 per child, the Taiwan Economic News reports. The move comes at a time when China continues to receive heavy criticism for its policy of coercive abortions and forced...

Chinese women married to Taiwanese men are being ordered to have abortions or sterilization surgery during visits to the mainland to comply with China's controversial "one-child policy." At least six of those women report that family planning officials forced them to undergo pregnancy tests in recent months, according to the Taiwanese body that deals with mainland relations, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). SEF legal services director Patricia Lin said by phone from Taipei Friday that those who were deemed to have violated the "one-child" rule - by getting pregnant after already having a child - were also fined and threatened...