Forced abortion in China stirs outrage

A Chinese mother was held down while a lethal injection was given to her seven-month-old fetus, after she failed to fill in an application form to have a second child.

A photograph showing 23-year-old Feng Jianmei lying on a hospital bed, with the corpse of her unborn daughter on a plastic sheet beside her, has spread virally through the Internet and forced the Chinese government to admit an illegal infanticide.

The photograph, taken by her cousin, A San, was posted on the Internet on June 11, a week after Communist party cadres in Shaanxi province forcibly aborted Feng’s child.

Feng and her 29-year-old husband, Deng Jiayuan, already have a child, a six-year-old girl. But, as farmers, they were entitled by Chinese law to have a second baby with the permission of their family planning bureau.

When Feng was three months pregnant, officials said they visited her and asked her to fill in an application form and to change her Chinese registration permit to say she lived in the countryside.

It is not clear why Feng failed to fill in the forms. She has complained on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, that she was not warned of the consequences until it was too late. But as her pregnancy progressed, local officials offered her family a deal: $6,400 to smooth the bureaucracy over.

When the couple said they did not have the money, Feng was taken from her home on May 30 and ransomed, her husband said. The officials held her for three days before giving the fetus a lethal injection on June 2.