The number of abortions being carried out by unmarried young Chinese women is on the rise. Experts suggest that the rise is due to more liberal attitudes to premarital intercourse in the city areas, along with the social stigma in the country concerning having a child before marriage.

Official figures shows the number of abortions is on the rise, even beyond the government enforced abortions used to keep urban couples to a one-child minimum. A government tally showed that abortions rose from 7.6 million in 2007 to 9.2 million in 2008. However, Chinese media speculates that the number could be well over ten million, as the figures to not tally abortions carried out beyond hospitals.

Zhou Anqin, the manager of an abortion clinic in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, was quoted as stating; ‘The moral outrage over having a child before marriage in our society is much stronger than the shame associated with abortion.’ He also claimed that the clinic performed nearly sixty abortions per month, mainly for students and women aged twenty-four or younger.

A survey funded by the UN had found that out of over twenty-two thousand Chinese aged between fifteen and twenty-four, two thirds were accepting of premarital sex yet had limited knowledge of sexual reproduction. The survey also found that twenty-two percent had had intercourse before, yet of those twenty-two percent more than 50% had not used contraception.