As you may have heard China’s State Council published new rules limiting abortions for “non-medical purposes” on Monday. However, what you may not have heard about is the predicament it will put many single women in.
Prior to the new guidelines, China was one of the leading countries for access to abortions. Essentially, the only restrictions were on sex-selective abortions to deter couples from ending a pregnancy based on a child’s gender. But China’s low reproduction rates are a concern for the government and abortion rates are on the rise. Despite the new, more lenient child policies, the National Health Commission released data that showed 9.7 million abortions were performed in China over a four-year period from 2014 and 2018. To give you an idea of the scale, that is just slightly more than the entire population of Hungary.
The low birth rates have been attributed to many factors. For instance, data suggests that the younger generation is delaying marriage for a career and financial stability. Likewise, the rising costs of childrearing mean many couples are opting to have only one.
This delay in marriage could also be part of the reason for a rise in abortions. Delays in marriage don’t translate to delayed sexual activity and being a single parent in China carries not only a stigma but some very real financial consequences. While it is not Illegal to be a single parent, local governments have the right to enact and enforce laws that bar single women from registering as a household or hukou. Without that registration single mothers are unable to access social services like schooling and medical care for their children. It has been assumed that this was mostly a provincial restriction but a recent NPR article shows that there are examples in first-tier cities of residency permits being restricted or denied to single mothers.
The lack of these services leaves many low- and middle-income women unable to financially support a child alone. According to consulting firm SMAPSE Education, the average cost of one year of private schooling in Beijing is more than RMB 77,000. When you consider the average salary range in Beijing is somewhere between RMB 100,000 and 120,000 per year, it’s understandable that some women would opt not to be single parents in these circumstances.
The new abortion rules don’t specify what exactly a medical purpose is but depending on how the new rules are applied, single women may be faced with some very difficult choices, or lack thereof, moving forward.
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