Chinese Legislative Committee Drops Provision That Would Have Criminalized Fetal Gender Identification For Nonmedical Reasons

The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, the country's legislature, recently voted to remove a provision from an amendment to the country's criminal law that would have criminalized the act of identifying the gender of embryos and fetuses for nonmedical reasons, Xinhua/People's Daily Online reports (Xinhua/People's Daily Online, 6/26). Chinese lawmakers in March 2005 proposed criminalizing the detection of a fetus' gender for nonmedical reasons in order to prevent sex-selective abortion and ease the resulting gender imbalance in the country. Although sex-selective abortion is banned in China, the increasing availability of technologies such as ultrasound procedures has made it easier to learn the sex of a fetus early in pregnancy. Currently, physicians who help patients determine a fetus' sex for nonmedical reasons face only administrative penalties. According to the latest government statistics, 119 boys are born for every 100 girls born in the country, and the disparity is even greater in some rural areas (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 3/1/05). The worldwide ratio is about 105 boys to 100 girls (AP/China Post, 6/25). Zhou Kunren, vice chair of the Law Committee of the standing committee, said disagreements remain between lawmakers over the proposal, which would have punished people involved with sex-selective abortion with three years in prison. According to the China Daily, some family planning officials and legislators support the proposal because of the gender imbalance, but other experts say that pregnant women should have the right to know the sex of the fetus (Sun, China Daily, 6/26).

Advocate Who Challenged China's One-Child Policy Formally Arrested
In other China news, Chinese police have formally arrested human rights advocate Chen Guangcheng, who has spoken out against China's one-child-per-family policy, his wife, Yuan Weijing, said Saturday, the Washington Post reports (Washington Post, 6/25). The one-child policy seeks to keep China's population, now 1.3 billion, at around 1.7 billion by 2050. Ethnic minorities and farmers are the only groups legally exempt from the rule. Chen, who is blind, recorded testimony from men and women in communities in and around Linyi, China, who have undergone forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as had family members captured and tortured after they tried to hide or run from authorities. He is attempting to bring a class-action lawsuit against the Chinese government for alleged human rights abuses associated with the enforcement. He was placed under house arrest in September 2005 for speaking with journalists, government officials and other advocates about the one-child policy (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 2/6). Chen has been in police custody since March under charges of "willingly harming public property" and "disturbing social order," according to advocate Zeng Jingyan (Agence France-Presse, 6/24). Li Jinsong, one of Chen's attorneys who has been briefly detained himself, said a policeman warned Chen that in prison "it is easy for people to die" and that if he did not confess he would not "come out alive." Li on Sunday said that Chen's defense team is unable to sue over threats to his life (Graham-Harrison, Reuters AlertNet, 6/25).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.