America’s One-Child Policy?

A recently published Associated Press article spotlights the horrors of China’s one-child policy and the forced abortions used to implement it.

The article tells the story of Gong Qifeng, who, at seven months pregnant, “begged for mercy” as “[s]everal people pinned her head, arms, knees and ankles to a hospital bed before driving a syringe of labor-inducing drugs into her stomach.” Thirty-five hours later, her baby boy was stillborn. He was her second son.

We in the West look at China’s one-child policy with abhorrence, as well we should. But in reality, is it very different from America’s own “abortion-on-demand” culture? When “pro-choicers” in our nation speak out against the policy (with the exception, perhaps, of Vice President Biden’s infamous comment about “not second-guessing” it), they don’t do so on the grounds that human life has intrinsic value.

Certainly, the Obama administration has announced that it “strongly opposes” the policy, but not on the basis that the unborn should be protected from slaughter – indeed, this administration supports the unbridled killing of the unborn. Instead, opposition among abortion proponents is packaged as the belief that killing should be the mother’s choice (although, as we’ve seen, the pro-abortion camp believes that abortion should be paid for by everyone).

At root, though, the philosophies underlying both China’s one-child policy and America’s own pro-abortion lobby are one and the same: a rejection of the sanctity of human life.

And while many would argue that there is a huge difference between the two, as our own government doesn’t force abortions on anyone (although, again, it is trying to force the funding of abortions on everyone), we’ve for years seen arguments that place relative worth on the unborn due to medical conditions, physical differences, etc.

If our foundational philosophy rejects the sanctity of all human life and esteems certain lives as less deserving of existence, then it’s only a matter of time before abortion-on-demand becomes abortion-on-command.

As Americans, we are blessed to live in the most advanced nation on earth. But if the peak of our advancement has plunged us to the depth of depravity where life is expendable, then our philosophies are not at all different from those that birthed China’s one-child policy.