It has emerged in recent news reports that many women in China are being forced into having abortions, even in the later stages of pregnancy, in attempts by government officials to keep a strong grip on population numbers and fully enforce their one-child family planning laws. Conservative reports show that the “one-child policy leads to an estimated 13 million reported abortions every year,” while others quoting substantially higher figures.

This has been particularly prevalent in rural areas where officials are accused of overlooking the human rights violations of coerced abortions in favour of meeting population control goals. Even though such practices have been banned by the central government in Beijing, they continue to terrorize women in both rural and urban areas. Xiao Ai Ying, for instance resides in one of the modern cities and was forced into terminating her pregnancy in the eighth month as she already had a ten year old daughter.

The scheme not only restricts married couples to having one child, those that violate such measures are forced to pay heavy fines “anywhere from $1 to $40,000,” with other sanctions including forced sterilisation. Such punitive, coercive measures have caused a huge outcry from the international community and human rights activists alike with calls to stop such measures.