In 1980, the communist country instituted restrictions on child bearing, including only allowing one child per family, which meant forcing abortions and sterilizations on couples who had subsequent pregnancies. China has since upped its policy to allow three children per family, but according to a Wall Street Journal source, the country is considering lifting all birth restrictions by 2025.
For Reggie Littlejohn of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, that raises a number of questions.
"The first one is why are they waiting until 2025," she begins. "I mean, China is desperate because they don't have enough girls and women to their men, and then also their population is aging very rapidly."
In other words, not enough children are being born to replace the aging and those leaving the labor force.
"When they do say that they are ending all birth restrictions, are they going to end it for everybody, or only for couples," Littlejohn continues. "Right now under the three-child policy, it's every couple is allowed to have three children, which means that if you're a single mom, you are not allowed to have any children."
In addition, Littlejohn wonders whether China will stop forcing abortions on Uyghur Muslims, which the country currently does in order to reduce the populations of such groups; others are sent to forced-labor concentration camps, where they are indoctrinated to accept Chinese thinking and to blend in with the rest of the nation's population.
