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MP calls out forced abortions on Uyghur women in China

An MP has urged the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to call on the Chinese Communist Party to end their population control measures, including forced abortions and sterilisation, of the Uyghur community in China.

Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, in a debate in the House of Commons on international development and gender-based violence drew attention to the “appalling” treatment of the Uyghur community at the hands of the Chinese Government.

Mrs Bruce said: “[The Uyghurs] are violated through forced birth control, pregnancy checks, the mandatory insertion of painful intrauterine devices, forced sterilisation and abortions. We hear that that is happening at scale, to hundreds of thousands of women”.

“These population control measures are backed by mass detention as a punishment for failure to comply. The threat of being sent to prison – to the camps that we hear so much about – hangs over these women”.

A climate of terror

“Simply having too many children is a major reason why people are sent to detention camps”.

“We even hear of female detainees being taken to prison camps and forced to abort their own unborn children. The result of this birth control campaign is a climate of terror”.

The MP went on to point out that in the regions of Hotan and Kashgar, birth rates among the Uyghur have “plunged” by more than 60% between 2015 and 2018.

“Will the [Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office,) James Cleverly], whenever possible, call on the Chinese Communist Party to end these horrific practices, which are part of a state-orchestrated assault on Uyghur women and the wider Uyghur community with the aim of purging them of their identity?”

Forced abortions in China

Forced abortions and sterilisations are a well-documented phenomenon in China. This year a doctor who escaped the regime in China has shared how she participated in at least 500-600 operations on Uyghur women in the country, including forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced removal of wombs.

Speaking to ITV News, the Uyghur woman also revealed abortions were carried out at full-term and that infanticide – the purposeful causing of a baby’s death – was common practice.

Historically, they are related to China’s infamous one-child policy and have resulted in widespread sex-selective abortions. In such abortions, baby girls are typically aborted precisely because they are girls. The UN estimates that over the last 30 years, 200 million girls have gone ‘missing’ as result of sex-selective abortion, many of them in China and India.

Right To Life UK’s spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said: “The unethical treatment that the Chinese Communist Party is perpetuating on its Uyghur population is beyond words. Fiona Bruce MP is right to urge the Foreign Office to condemn the CCP’s actions. Forced abortions not only end the life of an unborn child, but are also a gross attack on the dignity of their mothers”.

Dear reader,

You may be surprised to learn that our 24-week abortion time limit is out of line with the majority of European Union countries, where the most common time limit for abortion on demand or on broad social grounds is 12 weeks gestation.

The latest guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine enables doctors to intervene to save premature babies from 22 weeks. The latest research indicates that a significant number of babies born at 22 weeks gestation can survive outside the womb, and this number increases with proactive perinatal care.

This leaves a real contradiction in British law. In one room of a hospital, doctors could be working to save a baby born alive at 23 weeks whilst, in another room of that same hospital, a doctor could perform an abortion that would end the life of a baby at the same age.

The majority of the British population support reducing the time limit. Polling has shown that 70% of British women favour a reduction in the time limit from 24 weeks to 20 weeks or below.

Please click the button below to sign the petition to the Prime Minister, asking him to do everything in his power to reduce the abortion time limit.