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Abortion and China’s State Birth Control Program: A Socio-Ethical Inquiry

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Abstract

Nowhere else in the world, nor ever before in human history, has abortion been performed so extensively as a means of population control as in contemporary China. Since the early 1980s, the ambitious and intrusive state birth control program has had two essential aims: to control the quantity of the population through the one-child policy (replaced in 2015 with the two-child policy), and to enhance the quality of the population through eugenics. Such a state program constitutes a massive project of social engineering and thus a representative practice of authoritarian biopolitics. This chapter offers a socio-ethical inquiry into the role of abortion in the unprecedented population control campaign and the great plurality of differing Chinese perspectives. It discusses coerced abortion, eugenic abortion, sex-selective abortion, and the participation of health professionals, the question of liberty, the value of fetal life, the “common good” justification, and the international context. Particularly, it documents both the immediate and long-term effects of abortion on individuals, especially women, and on society as a whole. The chapter concludes that the tragic tale of abortion in contemporary China should serve as a perpetual lesson on authoritarian biopolitics for not only China but the world.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bioethics Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Jing-Bao Nie

  2. The Institute of the Medical Humanities, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Jing-Bao Nie

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  1. Jing-Bao Nie
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Correspondence to Jing-Bao Nie .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Bagheri

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Nie, JB. (2021). Abortion and China’s State Birth Control Program: A Socio-Ethical Inquiry. In: Bagheri, A. (eds) Abortion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63023-2_20

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