Are You A Policy-Breaking Pregnant Woman?
Now that SCOTUS has put its stamp of approval on politicians dictating your medical care and, for that matter, your life and health, here's a useful glimpse of what the government can now do to you (emphasis mine):
"Early marriages are still prevailing in some parts of the country, especially rural areas, which goes against the family planning policy," Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang as saying.
China, which is home to 1.3 billion people, introduced strict family planning policies more than 25 years ago to try to curb population growth.
Most urban residents are restricted to one child, while those in rural areas are encouraged to have one but allowed more in some circumstances. Those who have babies in violation of the restrictions are punished with heavy fines.
...
A Chinese health official has also said that rural women were risking maternal heath by delivering babies in violation of the restrictions at home or in unregulated clinics.
"Some policy-breaking pregnant women, who dared not apply any financial aid of childbearing for fear of legal punishment, chose to deliver babies at home or in substandard private clinics," Xinhua quoted Vice Minister of Health Jiang Zuojun as saying in a separate report.
In the south-eastern province of Jiangxi, half of maternal deaths were from pregnancies that fell outside of family planning restrictions, the report said.
Remember, politicians of various ideological stripes came and go, but the government regulating your internal organs is forever.
All.Hail.Our.Reproductive.Overlords!
posted by ema @ 12:59 PM
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I sympathise with your desire to keep your government from dictating reproductive choices, and China is certainly a strong example.
However, if 1,321,851,888 (July 2007 est.) people is not enough, how many do you think there should be in China? As long as they are a dictatorship, they can not be expected to act in any other way. It clearly is good for the nation state and thus enforced.
Humans are not the intellectual and rational beings they like to pretend to be. The planet is suffering irreparable harm that threaten the very children in question, and yet men and women yearn to make more.
Most western countries do not attempt to coerce women to have children based on ancient religious concepts. Some do, and the most notable is the US.
Another area where governments interfere is with fertility bonuses in their income tax laws. I don't know, but I suspect this is common throughout the world.
If we just leave it up to nature to determine our population, then that will be what happens. Some of the natural results will be starvation and mass extinctions.
Responsible citizens in democracies and dictatorships alike aught to be acting to reduce population growth by any means they find ethical.
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