Population and abortion policies in China: Their impact on minority nationalities |
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Authors: | Axel I Mundigo Ph D |
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Institution: | (1) International Program, Center for Health and Social Policy San, Francisco, CA;(2) International Program, Manchester, VT |
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Abstract: | The history of abortion in China is closely linked to the evolution of the country's population policy over the past four
decades. Abortion in China has been legal since 1953 and is widely available through services offered by the country's national
family planning program. In 1971, following the uncertain period of the Cultural Revolution (1965–1968), the government of
China, confronting the reality of its population size — which in 1970 was estimated by the United Nations at 800 million people
— decided to make a concerted effort to lower demographic growth by means of an effective birth planning campaign and services,
backed up with legal and safe abortion. Within a decade, in 1979, China strengthened its policy and imposed on the population
a reproductive norm allowing for only one child, known as the One-Child Family Policy. Ethnic minorities were at first exempt
from demographic policies but more recently pressure has been increasingly applied to them to control their fertility. Abortion
is now prevalent among nearly all Chinese ethnic minorities. Because of their remoteness and less favorable socio-economic
circumstances, minorities lack access to quality services that would lower or make abortion unnecessary. The paper represents
an effort to reverse the gap and confusion in the existing literature on ethnic group response to population and family planning
policies in China. |
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Keywords: | |
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