Tea at Trianon: Forced Abortions in China

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Forced Abortions in China

Beyond tragic.

Mrs Feng and her 29-year-old husband, Deng Jiayuan, already have a child, a six-year-old girl. But, as farmers, they were entitled by Chinese law to have a second baby with the permission of their local family planning bureau.

When Mrs Feng was three months pregnant, officials said they visited her and asked her to fill in an application form and to change her hukou, a Chinese registration permit, to say she lived in the countryside.

It is not clear why Mrs Feng failed to fill in the forms and transfer her residence. She has complained on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, that she was not warned of the consequences until it was too late. But as her pregnancy progressed, local officials offered her family a deal: pay 40,000 yuan ($6250) to smooth the bureaucracy over.

When the couple said they did not have the money, Mrs Feng was taken from her home on May 30 by more than 20 officials and ransomed, her husband said. The officials held her for three days, apparently sending threatening text messages to members of her family, before giving the foetus a lethal injection on June 2. (Read entire article.)

julygirl said...: Horrid....but in this country mothers are sanctioned by the government to 'terminate' their own pregnancies for convenience.; June 21, 2012 at 12:30:00 AM EDT