Pregnant women in China go into hiding to avoid forced abortions

Women in China are still being coerced by family planning officials to abort their babies despite the abandonment of the One-Child Policy.

Last year, the Chinese Communist Party announced that married couples will be allowed to have up to two children but some observers claim that coercion and human rights abuses are still committed against pregnant women who are over their birth quota.

Couples who are found to be in violation of the new policy can face steep fines and be compelled to abort their babies. "We'll definitely find you and persuade you to do an abortion," a family planning official told an undercover BBC reporter, as reported by Epoch Times.

Some couples go into hiding in order to keep their baby. "If we weren't in hiding, they would have forced us to have an abortion," said a local man who fled from his village with his wife after she became pregnant for the third time.

Couples who refuse to abort are often threatened with the loss of their jobs. In some provinces, such as Fujian, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan, Jiangxi, Yunnan, and Zhejiang, employers are allowed to terminate their employees if they exceed their birth quota.

Last August, Sixth Tone reported that a woman identified only as Anxiang was forced abort her baby after she was threatened with fines and dismissal from her job. She thought she would be allowed to keep her baby under the two-child policy, but the law in the province of Guangdong had an omission regarding remarried women.

After the procedure, she went on the WeChat group for remarried couples in Guangdong and posted a message which read: "I saw my daughter. She didn't move. She was dead."

In January, Vice Minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission Wang Pei'an stated that the family planning regulations could continue for "at least 20 years, 30 years."

Chinese President Xi Jinping also indicated that he will continue to push for the planned birth policies.

"The population issue has always been an overall, long-term, strategic issue facing our country...the tensions between population and resources and environment will not fundamentally change," said Xi in a statement to the Family Planning Association.