Throughout the world there are a myriad of debates on abortion, but in developed societies, one idea behind abortion is clear: forced abortions is an attack on human rights and is unacceptable. In China, however, abortion laws have been implemented since the 1970s. Due to a significant rise in population that China was undergoing at the time, the government had decided that the best course of action to limit the population growth was by creating a policy where each family was only allowed to bear one child.
The one-child policy was ruthless, with the hammer weighing heaviest in cities. China would attempt to enforce each family to have one child and would reward families that adhered to these rules with financial and economic incentives through jobs, and on the flip side, to families that did not adhere to these rules, they would be punished. Sometimes, drastic measures would be taken and China would force abortions and force many women to become sterilized as well.
From the outside, one may think that despite all of its flaws, the one-child policy can be considered a success. While that may seem to be true, there were some significant consequences as well. For one, China’s population skewed to more males overall. This was a direct consequence from the one-child policy because in Asian society, the male carries on the name of the family and is expected to take care of the parents when they become older as well as take over property. Due to Asian/Chinese culture putting so much more weight on males, Chinese parents would only want their one child to be a male and would forgo their daughters and set them up for adoption or just straight up abandon the daughters. Another significant consequence of this policy was creating a significant age gap. The vast majority of the population that was born pre-child policy laws started to become much older and the one-child policy caused the younger population to be much fewer in comparison to the older population and cause the workforce to shrink.
Fast forward to more recent times, in 2015, China finally abolished their one-child policy and instead picked up a slightly more lenient two-child policy. Despite the creation of this policy, China still would enforce forced sterilizations (of mainly women I may add) and abortions. Many people would try to go in hiding if they broke the policy because China would come check up on families every two months and would force any families with two kids already to force an abortion if a third was on the way.
All of these policies were created to tackle overpopulation. Overpopulation has changed the dynamic of China for decades. China cut its population growth significantly from these policies but at what cost? Forcing families to carry out abortions, traumatizing their own people solely so they don’t diminish all of their resources is inhumane and is why the issue of overpopulation is as big as it is.
Overpopulation: A Thermodynamic Approach 