WASHINGTON, Liu Dan was 21 years old and 9 months pregnant when family planning police grabbed her out of her home, dragged her to the local family planning office, and forcibly aborted her full term baby. They already knew from medical tests that she had high blood pressure and that a forced late term abortion would be dangerous for her. After the forced abortion, she lay alone and unconscious in an operating room in the family planning center. Sensing something was wrong, her fiancé burst into the room at 3:00 a.m. to find her bleeding from the eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Even so, the family planning police refused to call for emergency help, until her family insisted. Help arrived too late. Liu Dan died, along with her full term baby.
"The One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth. It is China's war on women," says Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women's Rights Without Frontiers. "Any discussion of women's rights, or human rights, would be a charade if forced abortion in China is not front and center. It does not matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice on this issue. No one supports forced abortion, because it is not a choice. The Chinese forced abortion policy is systematic, institutionalized violence against women."
Ms. Littlejohn will be among those testifying for the Committee on Foreign Affairs Congressional Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights, on September 22 at 2:00 in Room 2200 of the Rayburn House Office Building.
In addition, she will testify regarding blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng, who exposed the fact that there were 130,000 forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations in Linyi County in 2005. The Chinese Communist Party imprisoned Chen for four years and has kept him and his family under strict house arrest since September, 2010. On February 9, 2011 Chen released a video describing the deplorable conditions of his house arrest. The next morning, Chen and his wife, Yuan Weijing, were "beaten senseless." Chen's family recently was moved to a "personal prison" build for them.
"This treatment of Chen is unconscionable. It shows the appalling lengths to which the CCP will go to silence a hero who has spoken up against forced abortion in China."
