Barbara Demick Quotes
Over the years, so many exceptions and amendments were made to China's one-child policy that it was hard to pinpoint a moment to pronounce it dead.
Demick, Barbara. "China's One-Child Policy Is Dead." The New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2015.
One of the most contentious activities in all political history is a government trying to regulate the number of children which its citizens can have. When a government tries to do this, they run into opposition by some religious people who oppose birth control in general or some birth control methods (eg abortion). In addition it is opposed by many people who do not want the government involved at all in a decision that is so personal. Yet many governments, under the press of perceived overpopulation, or in an effort to limit mental retardation, have attempted such regulation and that includes the United States where 40 states have at one time or another practiced forced sterilization of people who the state believed were unfit to bear children. China and India—the largest nations of the world—have both maintained government policies and practices to control population with China making it illegal to have more than 1 child. These programs have reduced the population counts, but at a terrible ethical cost and resentment of the affected people.
Critics of Roberson observe that he had made much of his $100 million personal fortune evangelizing against abortion and communism, and yet he was willing to tolerate the Chinese government controlling procreation and using abortion as one of the methods. Then it was revealed that Robertson had large investments in China. If the Chinese had not reduced their birth rate, the huge increase in the Chinese standard of living that has been achieved would have been much less. Robertson did think that the abortion policy would hurt the Chinese but he was advising a foreign policy of non-interference.
The logic is that communities and areas—even countries have finite resources. Since we have a welfare society in which we will not allow people to starve, society must provide for children whose parents cannot. Therefore, individuals ought not to be allowed to breed beyond their ability to care for the children for if many would do so, the capacity of the community could be overwhelmed. A middle ground is that while the final decision should be left to the individual family, the society ought to educate and persuade members to limit their breeding.
At the time India was the second most populous country and had a very high birth rate.
As an example, if a woman is of childbearing age and does not pick up her regular subscription for birth control pills, the government requires that a phone call be made to the woman to “remind” her.
This proposal totally violates the freedom of many women who may be poor. Yet they may be orthodox Roman Catholics and birth control would be an anathema to them. Women’s freedom to control their own bodies requires that they have the right be decide whether to use birth control or not. This abuse of women’s freedom however is not unexpected from KKK members whose program advocates the denial of religious freedom and any rights to Blacks.
Barbara Demick is an American journalist. She was the Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood (Andrews & McMeel, 1996). Her second book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, was published by Spiegel & Grau/Random House in December 2009 and Granta Books in 2010. An animated feature film based on the book and sharing the same title was planned to be directed by Andy Glynne. The project launched in 2012 and a pilot was released in 2015. Its status as of January 2018 is not clear.
