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WASHINGTON, D.C., March 3, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Drawing attention to the Obama administration’s relative silence on human rights abuses in China, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) on Tuesday demanded Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explain why she had not taken the Chinese leaders to task over the oppressive “One Child Policy” and the resulting “gendercide” of Chinese girls.

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“Since 1979, brothers and sisters have been illegal in China as part of the barbaric one child per couple policy. And for 30 years, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has vigorously supported, funded, defended, promoted, even celebrated these massive crimes against humanity,” Smith told Clinton at a hearing for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Smith is the Republican co-chairman of the bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus, but also the chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights.

“The uncontested facts are these: Any Chinese, Tibetan, or Uyghur mother without a birth permit is put under coercive pressure to abort – if need be, she is physically forced to do so. All unwed moms are compelled to abort. In what can only be described as a search-and-destroy mission, disabled children are aborted as part of a nationwide eugenics program.”

Smith stated that China’s one child policy “has led to the worst gender disparity in any nation in history,” where the large proportion of missing girls in the population has made the country “a magnet for sex trafficking.”

Smith said that the lopsided demography in China resulting from the one-child policy means there “there may be as many as 100 million missing girls in China” – “dead, aborted because they were female, systematically destroyed over 30 years by sex selected abortion.”

Smith described the policy’s results as “gendercide, the evil twin of genocide.”

“The societal implications of the UNFPA-supported one child per couple policy are staggering,” said Smith, adding that the World Health Organization reports that close to 500 Chinese women commit suicide – per day.

“In light of this stunning human rights atrocity, I would like to know if you or the President raised the issue of forced abortion in China, when President Hu Jintao was in Washington, as Speaker John Boehner did,” stated Smith. “And if you raised it, what was the response? And if you did not raise it, why not?”

Clinton demurred to give Smith a definitive answer to his questions.

“I cannot answer that yes or no on that particular visit,” said Clinton, who then asserted, “we consistently raise it in our highest diplomatic encounters with our Chinese counterparts.”

When asked if Obama has ever discussed the issue of forced abortion in China with the Chinese premier, Clinton said that she did not know for sure.

“I will have to get an answer for you,” she said.