Despite the end of the one-child policy in China, the legislation maintains a limit on having an additional birth in the family. The recent change was announced by the ruling Communist party with effect from January 1, 2016.
The married couples will be allowed to have a second child but the legislation will maintain some limits to the next birth. The Chinese families are still not free to determine the size of their own families. Chairman Chris Smith while talking to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said that the new policy will allow more births but will not stop the local officials to pressurize the mothers to abort the child, if the birth has not been approved by the state, or is the couple’s third child.
The new law says that the women under the new law will have to obtain a permit to have the first child and the second child or be subject to a forced abortion. Reggie Littlejohn the Women’s Rights Without Frontiers said, “It will still be illegal for an unmarried woman to have a child”.
Littlejohn added, “Regardless of the number of children allowed, women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down on tables, and forced to abort babies that they want.” Experts have said that the shift to the two-child policy hasn’t helped much and is too late to help the country’s population crisis.
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