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Formula for Disaster
| Article
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12117 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1994 |
2,301 Words |
| Author
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Scarlet Cheng
Scarlet Cheng, based in Los Angeles, is a contributing editor
to the arts section of The World & I. |
A MOTHER'S ORDEAL
One Woman's Fight against China's One Child Policy
Steven W. Mosher
New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993
336 pp., $21.95
A revolution devours its own children. In the case of China, it devours even its unborn.
Since the 1960s, China has strongly urged birth control among the populace. Then in 1979 Deng Xiaoping announced the one-child policy. Two years later, it was nationwide. That each couple can now have only one child is well known. What is not so well known is how the policy has been enforced, and at what price to individuals and to society.
The story of Yang Chi An hit U.S. headlines in 1987, when Steven Mosher wrote of her plight for publications such as the Washington Post and Reader's Digest. While accompanying her husband, Wei Xin, on a study program in the United States, Yang inadvertently became pregnant with her second child.
When her work unit in China found out, it remained under a strict quota for new births and began coercing her, long-distance, to have an abortion. They sent letters threatening fines, probation, and harassment of Yang's elderly mother. Yang received mysterious phone calls, and she suspected that they were being watched.
In desperation, the couple applied for political asylum, under circumstances so unusual that it was originally denied by the INS. Later, asylum was granted through a special decision handed down by outgoing Attorney General Edwin Meese.
A child of Mao
The full story of A Mother's Ordeal, written by Steven Mosher from Yang's personal account, is a disturbing revelation. Yang grew up a child of Mao, a fanatical Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. She trained as a nurse and eventually headed a family planning clinic, where she herself regularly forced women into abortion and sterilization. The fact that most of the names in the book had to be changed to protect those friends and families still in China speaks to how fearsome enforcement of family planning has become.
Mosher witnessed the harsh
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