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 |  Subject: China Slave Pen: Forced Abortion Spurs Settlement  Thu Jul 12, 2012 5:10 am | |
| The family of a Chinese woman whose forced late-term abortion last month rekindled a bitter nationwide debate over the country's one-child policy agreed to accept more than $11,000 in compensation from the government as part of an out-of-court settlement.
Feng Jianmei, 23 years old, and her husband, Deng Jiyuan, on Tuesday accepted the offer from local authorities, which included more than 70,600 yuan ($11,090) in cash, Mr. Deng told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
"We wanted to end this business," Mr. Deng said, adding that his wife has returned home from the hospital.
The money has already been handed over by officials in the family's home township of Zengjia, near the city of Ankang in northwest China's Shaanxi province, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
"The signing of the agreement means neither party should raise any question related to the issue again," Xinhua quoted a local official as saying.
The case has captivated and enraged many in China and inspired calls for Beijing to revisit the country's one-child policy.
Forced abortion is illegal in China, and fines for second children are supposed to be levied only after the child is born, according to family-planning experts. Still, forced abortions aren't uncommon in areas where local officials face pressure to meet birth quotas.
Ms. Feng's case gained widespread attention on social-media sites in mid-June after graphic photos showing her lying on a hospital bed next to her aborted fetus were posted online.
Family members said Ms. Feng had been dragged to the hospital and forced to undergo the abortion on June 2 after she and her husband, who already have a 5-year-old daughter, had failed to come up with the cash to pay a 40,000-yuan fine for having a second child.
With outrage over the incident spreading, local authorities apologized to the couple, fired two officials and punished several others. The case was later cited in an open letter issued by a group of prominent scholars calling for an urgent reconsideration of China's family-planning policies.
"Behind these incidents are clear limitations and defects in the nation's family-planning laws," read the July 6 letter, signed by Beijing University sociologist Li Jianxin and a number of other prominent researchers.
Mr. Deng, who had previously said he planned to file a criminal complaint against the local government, said on Wednesday that the family wouldn't be pursuing criminal charges after the settlement.
Zhang Kai, the family's attorney, said they had given up on the criminal case because they didn't expect to get the necessary help from local law enforcement. "Although they have the right to press charges, if the prosecutors don't fulfill their responsibilities, it is impossible to do," he said.
The news provoked a mixed response online, with many social-media users complaining that the local government had been let off too easily.
"For better or worse, China is the world's second-largest economy—they can't afford to offer more?" wrote one user of Sina Corp.'s Weibo microblogging service posting under the handle Tuzhiquan, repeating a common refrain. "Or is it that regular people's lives aren't worth anything?"
Mr. Deng rejected accusations from some Internet users that the 70,600 yuan was hush money.
"We wanted to do this," he said, adding that relatives had advised him to settle so as not to put any more stress on his elderly mother. "We didn't start out looking for money, and we didn't want to be dealing with this all day, every day. So we settled."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303567704577519914257120978.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_World |
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