Forced abortions alive and well in China

Since the start of 2016, all Chinese couples have been allowed two children. But they can have no more than that unless they are from ethnic minorities.

In the town's health clinic he is busy screening local women.

All women of childbearing age have compulsory check-ups four times a year to ensure they're healthy… and not pregnant without permission. If a couple wants to start a family, they need to seek official approval before trying to conceive. The woman's medical history is logged in a little red book. It lists the children she has, contraception she uses and any terminated pregnancies.

After her ultrasound examination, I ask a woman holding the hand of small boy, if she is thinking about another baby. "Not yet!" she laughs. "My husband says it's too much financial pressure."

The rules and the amount imposed in fines vary drastically from one place to another and from case to case. But authorities generally set them between three times and 10 times the average annual salary.

While many people would like to have more children, several believe the state knows best and society's needs are greater than those of individuals. Communist officials have the unpleasant task of telling women who couldn't afford the fine to terminate their pregnancies.

"China was facing serious problems with a large population," he says. "We also told couples that more children would lower their standard of living and it was not in their child's interest either," official Li Bo said.

When pressed for the exact numbers of abortions he may have persuaded women to have, Bo says he doesn't know and looks increasingly awkward, twisting a tissue in his hand.

Within China, family planning officials' treatment of those who break the rules also varies. Shandong, a coastal province between Beijing and Shanghai, with a population of 96 million, has a reputation for being particularly harsh.

In a particular case in 2013, a couple conceived without permission, already having a daughter. Despite the relaxation of rules in rural areas, they had been banned from having a second child because their first baby was born before the mother was 20 years old. So the family hid the young woman from the family planning officials until she was six months pregnant because they believed the authorities would no longer be able to force her to have an abortion at that point.

They were wrong.

Family planning officers and village leaders stopped the young woman’s husband on his way home from work and beat him before bundling him into a minivan and taken to a nearby hotel where the beatings continued.

The wife's sister was also kept prisoner for three days to increase the pressure. She wasn't let out until the family handed over 10,000 yuan (€1307.59) - allegedly hotel expenses.

Then the parents-in-law were locked up and shown how their son was being treated. They offered to pay an above average fine or social maintenance fee of 70,000 yuan ($10,700; £7,400) to keep the baby but to no avail.

The family contacted a lawyer, Wu Youshui, who has a track record of investigating abuses by family planning officers across China in hopes that those responsible will be brought to justice and that they will be refunded some of the money they paid, but the young man says the family has been torn apart by what happened.

It is of little solace to the man or his wife that China now has a two-child policy. The abortion was done.

The one-child policy has a bitter legacy - it has caused heartache in millions of Chinese families. The supreme irony is that the country's problem today is not overpopulation, but a shrinking labour force that threatens future growth.