The law specifically mentions the use of sterilisation, abortion and bans on marriage to prevent people from passing on mental disabilities and disease to their children. Access to painless methods of preventing pregnancy and birth are almost unheard of, minimally discussed in official propaganda and largely absent from family planning legislation and policy directives. While birth control units in Chinese hospitals implement birth control policies for Tibetans living by a hospital, mobile birth control teams carry out birth control regulations for Tibetans living in rural villages and nomadic areas. Both teams have a monetary incentive to perform abortions and sterilisation on as many women as possible. The more names the doctors collect, the more money they get from their government, and from the women who are charged for the operation.
Abortion appears to be the major form of birth control in Tibet.
In China, it is legal to inject a woman who is nine months pregnant to induce abortion, and to kill infants in the birth canal with a lethal injection. If delivered alive, the foetus is also injected so it will die. In some parts of Tibet it was been reported that abortions have been carried out by inserting a small electric device into the womb through the vagina to mince up the foetus. Following this, the women are given a pill so that the foetus can be taken out in bits. The Chinese authorities do not talk publicly about this method of abortion.