“In China, a woman’s body is not her own; it’s in the domain of the state.”
    -Reggie Littlejohn, President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers   

Thursday, September 22 marked a victory for human rights activists at United States Congress. The Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights held its One Child Policy Hearing (watch webcast here) in the Rayburn House Office Building, and a few women who had suffered from these massive human rights injustices finally had their voices heard.

Committee Chairman (Representative) Christopher Smith, (R- NJ) and members of his subcommittee hosted prominent human rights activists including Reggie Littlejohn (President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers) and Dr. Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University. Additionally, three survivors of the cruelties resulting from the One Child Policy spoke about their individual situations.  The women’s first-hand accounts of China’s human rights abuses were gut-wrenching, making it nearly impossible to leave Rayburn 2200 without a pit in your stomach.

Each woman had her own story, yet the human rights injustices incurred against them were shocklingly similar.  Ms. Ji was told she would be fined 200,000 yuan (the equivalent of 32,000 US Dollars) and lose her job if she had more than one child.  When she became pregnant with her second child, she was dragged to the abortion clinic and forced to have an abortion.  Meanwhile Ms. Lu was forced to go through five abortions between 1983 and 1990, after the birth of her first child in 1983.  Every month, the local Family Planning Commission checked to ensure she was not pregnant. She could only collect payment from her job when they verified she was not pregnant.  During her final abortion, the examiners placed an IUD in her - despite her protests because she had a kidney disease.  Furthermore, her husband was fired from his job and jailed.

As China’s one-child policy nears its 31^st anniversary, there is still no end in sight to these aggressive regulations. The policy, which is still strictly enforced by the Chinese government, began in 1979 and was scheduled to end September 25, 2010. Since the implementation of the policy, government crackdowns and social pressure to have a son have resulted in at least 50 million “missing” women. A traditional preference to have sons along with the one-child policy has led to sex-selection abortions and a major gender imbalance throughout the country. Unfortunately, many families feel they must resort to extreme measures in order to ensure a male heir and avoid breaking the one-child regulation. The growing gender gap poses the question- how have such a large number of women seemingly vanished while going unnoticed by the rest of the world?

What has been termed as “gendercide” continues to produce rippling effects throughout the country that threaten and devalue the lives of women and children. The conditions of the one-child policy have allowed human trafficking to thrive as unwanted girls and boys are traded as commodities. In July, an unprecedented raid by the CCP’s Ministry of Public Security unveiled a child trafficking ring that led to the suspension of over 300 suspects. At least 81 children were rescued, including 13 babies as young as 10 days to 4 months old. The Ministry reported the deployment of 2,600 police officers from 14 provinces in the July 20^th raid. The incident has only touched the surface of a major black market in which children are bought and sold as future wives, slave laborers and sex workers. As successful as this raid may have been, the root causes of child trafficking in China are still very much in place.

(Published March 12, 2010 in the Huffington Post) This Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will mark the fifteenth anniversary of her speech at the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 . Then-First Lady Clinton's remarkable speech represented one of the loudest, clearest calls for all nations to uphold women's rights, and to recognize that "women's rights are human rights." There is much for Secretary Clinton to celebrate this Friday as she reflects upon the progress the world has made towards realizing the goals set at the conference in Beijing fifteen years ago. But the work that began in Beijing is far from finished. One striking example of the continued abuse of women's human rights has remained largely unchanged since 1995, despite the fact that it affects one-fifth of the world's women: China's One Child Policy. (Read more after the jump)