Right now, the World Health Organization estimates the male to female birth ratio in China at 117 to 100, whereas the statistical norm is 106 to 100. The answer, sadly, is all too clear. Female infanticide, abandonment, or neglect of baby girls are also factors. Because of societal pressures instituted by law in China, little girls are often abandoned or neglected so that the parents can try for a male child. It is important to understand that it is not only baby girls or babies with disabilities who fall victim to China's coercive population control program.
Intense pressure is placed on women to abort their unborn children as a matter of course in China.
If an unauthorized child is born, the penalties include fines, withholding of social services, demotion, and other administrative punishments that sometimes result in the loss of employment. There are reports of unpaid fines resulting in the confiscation or even destruction of homes and personal property by local authorities. Arrests and imprisonment are common too. Because of last year's defection by the head of a birth control clinic, Mrs. Gao Xiao Duan, we now know that the PRC program is more coercive than ever. Mrs. Gao, who appeared on Ted Koppel's Nightline program, also testified at one of my hearings.