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YOUSHAN BOROUGH, Guangdong Province, August 29, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A woman who was nine months pregnant says her baby was forcibly aborted under China’s one child policy.

Lili Zeng from Youshan Borough, Xinfeng County, Guangdong Province in China, recounts in an article posted on the Tianya Club forum how her baby was born alive, and died in her arms. She says that two days before her due date in January 2011, “seven family planning officials held down my body and forcibly aborted my baby by needle injection because I did not have a ‘birth permit.’” 

She says that after the injection, she was left alone, where she felt “as if I were a pig waiting to be slaughtered.”  

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“That night, I gave birth to a boy; he was still alive, breathing. I asked for help, but no one answered me,” she says. “I passed out because I was exhausted from the pain in my abdomen. The next day, when I woke up, my baby died. I painfully held the baby for a very long time until the body of the baby stiffened.” 

Ms. Zeng’s account of her forced abortion was discovered and translated into English by the human rights group Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, and has not been independently verified. However, it is only the latest in a series of such accounts of brutal forced abortions and sterilizations that have come out of China.

Despite promises by the Chinese government that forced abortion is illegal, human rights groups with knowledge of the on-the-ground situation say forced abortions and sterilizations are routine occurences, committed by family planning officals under heavy pressure to meet quotas. 

According to Ms. Zeng, after repeated requests to the Family Planning Office for an explanation, she received a lengthy communication from a Family Planning Officer stating that she had been forcibly aborted at the request of her ex-husband’s first wife, with whom he has a son. 

Her ex-husband (assumed to be her husband at the time), signed the consent form for the forced abortion. 

Ms. Zeng quoted a letter that she says she received from the Family Planning Officer. “Lili Zeng, I have nothing against you,” writes the officer. “I am just an executer of the policy. If I were not the Family Planning Director, there would be somebody else who would have handled the situation the same way, and your fate would have been the same. If you want to blame someone, please blame the [one child] policy, or your husband.”  

Ms. Zeng states she has attempted suicide three times since the forced abortion. 

Although the forced abortion occurred in 2011, Ms. Zeng has broken her silence in an attempt to seek justice. 

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“Our hearts break for Ms. Zeng,” said Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, in a press release. “Her experience dramatically demonstrates the connection between forced abortion and China’s astronomical female suicide rate.” 

Littlejohn said the account also shows that babies can be born alive during abortions and left to die, and that in China, “a woman can be forcibly aborted up to the ninth month of pregnancy with the consent of her presumed husband.”  

“Finally, Ms. Zeng’s experience shows that – even when a woman is pregnant with her first child – if it is her husband’s second child, she can be forcibly aborted,” she added.  

“We strongly condemn forced abortion under China’s one child policy and demand that the Chinese government put a stop to these atrocities immediately,” said Littlejohn.