By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
WASHINGTON, May 14, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal of a Chinese couple seeking asylum from China’s brutal One Child Policy.
Asylum applicant Yi Qiang Yang married his wife when he was 20 and she was 17, defying Chinese laws that suppress population growth by requiring men to wait for marriage until the age of 22 and women until the age of 20. Yang’s lawyers claim they married in a private religious ceremony.
When authorities discovered that Yang’s wife was eight months pregnant, they forced her to have an abortion because she had become pregnant before the legal age of marriage, according to testimony submitted by Yang’s attorneys.
“The fetus was placed in a bag and disposed of in front of Ling” states Yang’s legal brief.
Yang’s attorney writes that “Because traditionally married spouses are unable to register their marriages with the government, the state treats such couples who have children as violators of the population control policy.” He adds that “Such couples are often subjected to forced abortions or sterilizations” according to the Christian Science Monitor.
China’s One Child Policy, which has been in effect since the 1970s, regularly forces women to undergo abortions if they have more than a single child in urban areas, or two children in rural areas. Those who are unmarried under Chinese law are prohibited from having any children.
Yang’s petition for asylum had been turned down in previous rulings, apparently because the federal judges heari