CHINA’S DENIAL OF TIBETAN WOMEN’S
RIGHT TO REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM
When I was pregnant with my third child Chinese officials came to my house many times to convince me to have an abortion. They told me that I was not allowed to have a third child and that I should go to the hospital when I was about 5 months pregnant to have an abortion injection. I became very frightened and decide to leave my home until the baby was due. I was afraid I would be forced to have an abortion if I stayed at home. I went to stay with my mother In another village. During the months I stayed with my mother ‘the officials who had told me to get an abortion came to my home about 10 times. They asked my husband where I was. When he said that he didn’t know where I was they slapped him in the face, kicked him and beat him with sticks. They threatened to arrest him if he didn’t tell them where I was and if I didn’t turn up. They carried pistols and handcuffs.
When the baby was due I went home. About one month after the delivery the officials came to my house again and threatened that they would take away all our possessions and arrest my husband . . . . They ordered me to come with them to hospital . . . . I was given an injection in my spine. It was meant to anesthetize me, but in fact I could feel exactly what the doctors were doing. The operation was very painful. There were four beds in the surgery room. I saw with my own eyes how they injected pregnant women with very long needles. They injected the head of the baby with some kind of poison. Later these women had miscarriages in hospital. I saw many foetuses in the toilets. I saw how they were eaten by dogs. The parents weren’t allowed to keep the foetus unless they paid the medical bill for the operation. These bills were so high that nobody could pay them.
Although Tibet has always been sparsely populated, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is regulating the timing of childbirth and limiting the number of Tibetan children permitted to be born. The PRC has enforced these limits by a number of means, unofficially since the early 1980’s, and officially since 1992.‘ Severe economic and social sanctions for having a child "out of plan" coerce women to undergo abortions and sterilization operations against their will.‘ These sanctions include imposing fines, often exceeding a familys entire yearly income, and denying the "out of plan" Chad the papers required to attend school and receive medical care.‘ Reports have confirmed that Tibetan women arc subjected to abortions and sterilization operations without being informed of the procedures’ real purpose.5 Other reports, like C.’s above, document that women are coerced into submitting to abortions and sterlizations to avoid the arrests and imprisonment of their husbands. 6
In addition to being coercive, the PRC’s family planning policy for Tibetans is unnecessarily intrusive, violent and medically unsound. There is no evidence that the PRC considered creating a family planning policy for Tibet that is focused on contraception. The PRC considers most contraceptive drugs and IUDs unsafe and too expensive; as a result, abortion is the most common form of birth control. Late-pregnancy abortion procedures arc commonly performed. Tibet Information Network (TIN) reports that women who are more than 45 days pregnant are sent home from hospitals and required to return when they arc no less than five months pregnant.‘ These operations are not only physically dangerous and debilitating for Tibetan women, they also unnecessarily increase the psychological trauma suffered by women who are forced to carry the fetus until it is potentially viable, and then submit to an abortion.
Outside of the TAR in Eastern Tibet, in the areas traditionally called Amdo and Kham, compulsory birth control has been implemented in some areas since 1982. In contrast to the TAR, where family planning was first implemented in the larger cities, family planningprograms in Eastern Tibet were first implemented in the countryside. For exam le, in Ganze, a Tibetan Prefecture within Sichuan Province, Province birth control regulations show that Tibetan farmers and nomads have been limited by law to two children, or three children with special permits, since 1989 or earlier. Over time, family planning moved from the countryside into the towns: As in the TAR, the family planning policies have gradually increased in restrictiveness since they were first implemented.
According to a recent report, since 1991 all Tibetans in Gonghe County, Qinghai Province, have been restricted to one child, regardless of whether they are cadres or not.‘ The worst occurrences of forced and coerced abortions and sterilizations have been reported from this region. This includes "blitz" campaigns of mobile family planning teams which have entered remote villages in Tibet to carry out abortions and sterilizations of virtually every woman of child bearing age, regardless of age, health or number of children. There arc numerous reports which document that Tibetan women are subjected to abortions without their knowledge.49 Women arc encouraged to go to clinics for checkups or for medical purposes unrelated to their pregnancy, and then are given injections to induce abortion, without being told the purpose of the injection. Abortions are often followed by sterilization operations, performed without informed consent." Further, there are reports of hospitals where, at the time of birth, lethal ethanol is injected into the babies’ heads, causing them to be born dead . Tibetan women who have become wise to the trickery now often are highly suspicious of any attempt to encourage them to go to a hospital when they arc prcgnant.52 However, ;his means that women, to avoid the risk of abortion, and sterilization, go through their pregnancy and child birth without any medical attention at all.
Most of Tibet’s population do not live in cities but in villages too small to support a hospital. To carry out its family planning programs in the villages, the PRC has established mobile birth control teams which go from village to village and operate on a large number of women in a very short period of time. The use of force during these "mobilizations"‘or "blitzes" has been reported’. Blake Kerr has relayed the story told by two Buddhist monks, Ngawang Smanla and Tsewan Thondon who the witnessed a Chinese mobile birth control team which set up its tent next to the monks’ monastery in Amdo in 1987 and reported that
"The villagers were informed that all women had to report to are the tent for abortions and sterilizations or- there would be grave consequences. Women who went peacefully to the tents and did not resist received medical care. The women who refused are to go were taken by force, operated on, and given no medical care. Women nine months pregnant had their babies taken out" During the two weeks the birth control tent stood in their cry village, the monks claimed that all pregnant women had abortions followed by sterilization, and every woman of childbearing age was sterilized. "We saw many girls crying, heard their screams as they waited for their turn to go into ;he tent, and saw the growing pile of fetuses bad outside the tent,which smelled horrible."
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