Forced abortions can still occur in China under the one-child policy, as a case that has been brought to international attention shows. An ethnic woman in the north-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region who is six months pregnant was forcibly taken by police to a hospital early this week to have the baby, her third child, aborted. However, pressure from the United States led to the abortion being abandoned. “I brought her home,” the local population control committee chief told Radio Free Asia. “She wasn’t in good enough health to have an abortion.”

The one-child policy applies mainly to majority Han Chinese and allows ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs, to have additional children, with peasants permitted to have three children and city-dwellers two. But while Tursun is a peasant, her husband is from the city, so their status is unclear. The government also uses… click here to read whole article and make comments