While the
American feminist left devotes its time, money and energy to pushing for
taxpayer-funded contraception, claiming the right to call each other “slut,”
and ranting about the right’s fictional “War on Women,” there is a real war being waged on one out of every
five women and girls in the world –China’s “One Child Policy.” The
soul-wrenching reality of this rather bureaucratic-sounding term is a cruelty
that is unimaginable to most Americans: forced
abortion and sterilization, female infanticide, and a concomitant rise in sexual
slavery throughout Asia.
Reggie
Littlejohn is a real warrior for women’s rights. The founder and president of Women’s
Rights Without Frontiers (WRWF), she has spoken five
times before the U.S. Congress, twice at the European Parliament, and at the
British and Irish Parliaments as well. She
has also briefed the White House, State Department and Vatican about blind
Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng and One Child Policy issues.
Ms. Littlejohn has been advocating for the release of Chen, whom she calls “one of the human rights giants of the twenty-first century,” since 2008. Chen became a thorn in China’s side when he began challenging China’s coercive population control policy. He and his wife have been imprisoned and tortured as a result. (For more about Chen and his stand against forced abortion, check out the WRWF’s three-minute video, “Free Chen Guangcheng!”)
Reggie Littlejohn spoke last Saturday at the Commemoration of the 23rd Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, hosted by the Visual Artists Guild of Los Angeles. At that event she received the “Spirit of Tiananmen” Award. In a presentation that was both disturbing and compelling, she pulled no punches in her condemnation of China’s totalitarian “family planning” cruelty:
The true spirit of the Chinese Communist Party is most clearly
seen in the faces of the population control police as they drag women away,
beat them, strap them down to tables, and force them to abort babies that they
want, up to the ninth month of pregnancy.
In
between that presentation and jetting off to Washington D.C., she found time to
answer a few questions for FrontPage.
Mark Tapson: What inspired you to get involved in this issue and to establish
Women’s Rights Without Frontiers?
Reggie Littlejohn: I'm an attorney
and in the mid-'90s I represented Chinese refugees in their cases for political
asylum in the United States. My first refugee was forcibly sterilized. A large
group of family planning officials literally dragged her screaming and pleading
out of her home, strapped her down to a table, and cut through her abdominal
wall to tie her tubes without anesthesia. She said the pain was unimaginable.
She got a serious infection and after that suffered from chronic abdominal
pain, back aches, and migraines.
That was my introduction to the reality
behind the words "One Child Policy." I was absolutely appalled. In
2008 I testified about the One Child Policy at the European Parliament. There,
I was told that no one had dedicated their life to this issue. The One Child
Policy affects one out of every five women in the world. Because of the numbers
involved, it is the greatest women's rights atrocity on earth today. I just
couldn't look the other way.
MT: Many people are casually familiar with China’s “One Child Policy,”
but that phrase doesn’t really convey the ugly human reality of its enforcement,
does it? How numerous are its victims?
RL: Before I
represented my first asylum client, I knew that China had a so-called One Child
Policy, but I did not know that it is currently enforced through forced
abortion, involuntary sterilization and infanticide. I did not know that it
leads to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of baby girls. I did not know
that because of this gendercide, there are now 37 million more males living in
China. This gender imbalance is driving human trafficking and sexual slavery,
not only within China, but from the surrounding countries as well.
The Chinese Communist Party boasts that it
has "prevented" 400 million births through the One Child Policy.
That's greater than the entire population of the United States. To see the
brutal truth about the One Child Policy, watch our four-minute video, “Stop Forced
Abortion – China’s War on Women!” [Warning: intense and graphic images]:
MT: Why aren’t women’s rights groups in America more vocal about the
horrors facing women and female babies under such a policy?
RL: Any women's
group that stands for choice should be jumping up and down to oppose forced
abortion under the One Child Policy. Any women's group that stands for
reproductive health should be crying out against forced sterilization, which
often ruins a woman's health. Any group that stand for women's rights should
strongly condemn the sex-selective abortion of up to 200 million women, according
to one U.N. estimate.
And yet, these women's groups have been slow
to take up these issues. Perhaps they do not realize the brutal truth of what
is happening in China. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is doing everything we
can to make this information known. Watch the trailer to a new, feature-length
documentary about gendercide in India and China, called “It's a Girl.”
MT: Chen Guangcheng has been in the news quite a bit lately, the focus
of a diplomatic standoff between China and the United States, but many people
are only vaguely aware of what cause he’s known for. Do you think the news
media intentionally downplay that, and if so, why?
RL: I believe that
the news media have been reluctant to highlight the fact that Chen Guangcheng
was arrested for fighting forced abortion and involuntary sterilization in
China. Perhaps they feel that their “pro-choice” positions might be compromised
by discussing this issue. This is nonsense. Forced abortion is not a choice!
MT: What can Americans do to help?
RL: People can be a great help simply by watching our video
about China’s One Child Policy and signing our petition against forced abortion, and forwarding them to their friends via twitter,
Facebook or other social networking sites.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 5/31/12)
