Our investigation shows that the number of children permitted to Tibetans varies by district and employment. For instance, witnesses report that in Phenpo county, Tibetans are allowed two children and women cannot marry until age 25, although in some other areas, Tibetan women can marry at 22.There must be three years in between the birth of each child. The Mission interviewed many women who described coerced weekly pregnancy checks of women. Women are told that they will lose their jobs if they have an extra child. In Chushul, officials are allowed two children, farmers three.
Family planning workers there conduct monthly checks of every household to ascertain pregnancy.
Typically, a third or fourth child cannot receive ration cards or identity papers, resulting in an inability to attend school or receive health care. They can be so high compared to the monthly wage that women subject to such fines are effectively working for pay that is far below the subsistence level. The economic and social hardship of such fines is so severe that many women are coerced into birth control methods that they do not want and that violate their cultural and religious beliefs. Our investigations uniformly find that Tibetan women as a whole have been traumatized by these practices, and that those that have endured them experience great trauma, sadness and pain long after they are able to flee occupied Tibet. The most troubling of the practices of forced or coerced abortion occur when a fetus well into the second or even into the third trimester is poisoned or killed and then extracted from the womb.