China's Parents

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ErrorCMDR

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Do parents who live in China and know the one child law but decide to brake it, resulting in a mandatory abortion have some responsibility in the child’s murder?

If they knew the law and still decided to break it I believe that the parents who do this share some responsibility for the murder.

look forward to discussion

God Bless

EC
 
Hmmm, interesting question. The parents in China can choose to either follow God’s law and not contracept but then risk having their extra children aborted or they can choose to not follow God’s law and contracept but avoid having their extra children aborted. It seems like a dilemma to me. I would be interested in seeing what the Church teaches in such a situation.
 
ErrorCMDR said:
Do parents who live in China and know the one child law but decide to brake it, **resulting in a mandatory abortion **have some responsibility in the child’s murder?

If they knew the law and still decided to break it I believe that the parents who do this share some responsibility for the murder.

look forward to discussion

God Bless

EC
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I think you will find that is not correct. Additional children outside certain allowable exceptions result in fines. If you can show me where in the law abortion is mandatory for a second pregnancy then I will stand corrected.
 
This article is from CNN. No where does it say explicitly that the Chinese government has forced abortions upon women (or couples) but they do use phrasing like “this policy has prevented about 400 million births” and “Enforcement varies but…”. They also go on to admit to the forced sterilization of some and the abortion of girl babies in preference to boys (which is typical of Chinese society, going all the way back to ancient times. Maybe they didn’t abort their girls, but they sure weren’t nice to them).

cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/10/china.onechild/index.html

So that’s one. I’ll post again if I find more.
 
Interesting question…

There is a children’s book series about similar circumstances. The Shadow Children, I think it’s called by Margaret Haddix. It’s an intriguing premise.

Assuming the conditions stated in the first post are true for the sake of discussion…

Any such law is certainly not a just law and therefore one is not morally bound to follow it out of respect for authority.

ABC is an intrinsic evil and therefore could not be used.

If they got pregnant (accidentally or intentionally) and didn’t try to hide it, I believe they would be partially culpable.

The discussion then moves to “would it be irresponsible not to abstain under such circumstances?” – a slightly different question than asking if it’s sinful.

Certainly one would be required to fight to end such a law. I believe the most responsible decision would be to abstain until the law is overturned.

If, however, there was no end to the law in sight, that puts things in a different light; abstinence during marriage is not a permanent solution. If that were the case, I would say that the moral obligation would be to flee the country.

The worst case scenario would be where one was unable to leave and had no way to fight the law. In such a case, one could either choose to abstain permanently, use NFP to avoid pregnancy accepting the chance that one could have a child, or try to raise more children secretly. The second and third options mean accepting the possibility of murder, while the first means the likely destruction of most marriages (the fundamental building block of society). I’ve never seen a more true example of being caught between a rock and a hard place.

I’m not sure what the best course of action in such a situation. My guess would be to use NFP to avoid a second child. There is a possibility of murder, but it is important to remember that the parents are not the ones commiting murder and presumably have been doing everything they could to avoid it. Under these circumstances I do not think the couple would be culpable for the murder.
 
It is not a sin to break an immoral law… such as determining family size. As far as I know, it would not be considered a sin if they were forced to have an abortion.
 
BlestOne said:
It is not a sin to break an immoral law… such as determining family size. As far as I know, it would not be considered a sin if they were forced to have an abortion.
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As far as the law goes (telling citizens that they may only have one child) is not immoral the immoral thing is the punishment. With NFP and other processes used not to get pregnant are not 100% the only option for guaranteed no pregnancy would be Abstinence. Because we are told to obey just laws and apart from the punishment the law is not intrinsically evil they should obey it IMO.

I don’t think the blame for murdering the child should lay just with the parents because they (in the example I gave) knew and broke the law so some of the punishment is on their hands.

God Bless

EC
 
OnceUponATime said:
This article is from CNN. No where does it say explicitly that the Chinese government has forced abortions upon women (or couples) but they do use phrasing like “this policy has prevented about 400 million births” and “Enforcement varies but…”. They also go on to admit to the forced sterilization of some and the abortion of girl babies in preference to boys (which is typical of Chinese society, going all the way back to ancient times. Maybe they didn’t abort their girls, but they sure weren’t nice to them).

cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/10/china.onechild/index.html

So that’s one. I’ll post again if I find more.
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There is nothing in that article about abortions (forced or not).
 
thistle said:
I think you will find that is not correct. Additional children outside certain allowable exceptions result in fines. If you can show me where in the law abortion is mandatory for a second pregnancy then I will stand corrected.
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news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24656719-663,00.html
Chinese authorities have ordered Arzigul Tursun, who is 26 weeks pregnant, to abort her unborn child because she has two other children.
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it happens. if you wont do it freely they chain you to the bed and do it by force. you stand corrected, sadly for all of us.
 
thistle said:
I stand corrected. Its also ironic that after all that killing China will have to reverse its policy in the coming years because they need more young people.
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thats very true, they are very gender imbalanced as it is.

that article made an interesting point though.

the woman having abortion forced on her came back to get it because the goverment was going to confiscate her whole village basically and starve everyone out. i know you still can never justify abortion, but how bad would it be to be responsible for a whole towns death, surely that would mitagate some culpabality.
 
aggiecatholic05 said:
thats very true, they are very gender imbalanced as it is.

that article made an interesting point though.

the woman having abortion forced on her came back to get it because the goverment was going to confiscate her whole village basically and starve everyone out. i know you still can never justify abortion, but how bad would it be to be responsible for a whole towns death, surely that would mitagate some culpabality.
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So would you agree that the parents if fully aware break the law, they share some responsibility in the murder of their child. I know this is an odd proposition but if they are Catholic they can practice NFP or if they want to be extra safe just abstain till marriage.

God Bless

EC
 
All I have heard of is fines. I’ve travelled to China ~8 times and have many Chinese friends since I’m an electrical engineer.

If it is happening and sounds like it is in places I think the parents fall into the “protected by not knowing clause”. I’m sure they still hurt.

China is a wide open territory waiting for a religious revolution, I hope we are able to evangelize there.
 
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