So we come to the work of Marie Stopes International (MSI).
One of the most horrifying things to me is that MSI receives a grant from the Department of International Development (British tax payers’ money) for their overseas programme. Despite parliamentary questions in the Lords and the Commons, as well as Motions tabled by MPs and Peers in both Houses, nobody has ever denied (least of all, Marie Stopes) that the money from the British Taxpayer enables them to operate in China where the Government policy allows couples only one child. It is a policy which is imposed ruthlessly to the point that women are dragged from their homes to be forcibly aborted... and the men forcibly sterilised.
On the contrary, MSI arranged for a Parliamentary delegation of MPs and Peers to visit their work in China to show how well British Government money was being spent!
Even worse, MSI gave the red carpet treatment to Ms. Li Bin (see left), the Minister of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, when they invited her to this country as a Guest of Honour in April 2010. An Early Day Motion (EDM) tabled in the Commons by Labour MP, Jim Dobbin, drew attention to the visit (noting that MSI claimed to disapprove of force and to discourage it). The MPs called for Government grants to be withdrawn from the group and stated:
“… the one-child policy has caused untold suffering and misery to millions, including forced abortions and sterilisation with imprisonment for those fighting against the law... notes... a 20-day campaign in April in Puning County, where 9,559 adults were required for compulsory sterilisation with doctors working 20 hours a day to achieve the numbers... (and) some 1,300 people were confined by force because their relatives refused to submit to the surgery...”
A number of lawyers and civil rights workers have been imprisoned for seeking to defend women from compulsory abortion. In Shandong Province, in eastern China, Chen Guangcheng (see right), a blind legal expert who had spoken out against local abuses of population control policies was imprisoned for four years and three months. His lawyers complained that local officials had barred important defence witnesses as well as members of his family from the trial. When he finally emerged from prison he was kept under house arrest where he remains. Throughout the whole of his ordeal he and his wife have been subjected to violence from police and guards as is anybody who tries to visit him.
Ms. Li Bin’s red-carpet visit to Britain occurred at about the time Marie Stopes achieved huge publicity for its advertising campaign on prime time television deliberately aimed to reach the young (including under-age children). Yet, As the EDM noted, they were strangely and totally silent about their Honoured Guest. None of us would have known about the visit but for Tibet Truth, a human rights organisation protesting about the barbarities inflicted on the people of China and Tibet. You can read their report here. Moreover, MSI still remained silent – albeit that the bloodiness and cruelty of the Chinese policy might have seemed just a bit over the top even for Mrs. Marie Stopes (see left), their founder.
She was a dreadful woman. She was a racist and elitist. Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger (see below, who set up International Planned Parenthood) loathed blacks, browns, Jews, Gypsies, the Irish, to name a few. Anglo-Saxons were, of course, acceptable... but only so long as they were not poor. They – that is the poor – were apt to be described as feckless, and it was made abundantly clear that everything possible should be done to stop them from breeding.
Dear old Marie and Margaret actually visualised sort-of-benign concentration camps where all those groups (as mentioned above) they considered undesirable could be harboured if they insisted upon having children. Not surprisingly, they were both great admirers of Hitler and actually visited Germany to meet him and to show that they were great supporters of his fan club.Like Hitler, they were both up to their eyes in eugenics and were utterly self-righteous about the elimination of the disabled – both before and after birth – with no questions allowed, let alone asked!
I am not suggesting that to-day Marie Stopes International workers drag women from their homes in China to forcibly abort them. Nonetheless they act in accordance with the Chinese Government’s Family Planning Programme to ensure couples do not have more than one child – unless of course they are among the elite in the Communist Party (“all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”). I have no doubt whatsoever that Marie Stopes workers are very polite about it. Nonetheless it is coercive abortion and sterilisation to ensure that couples do not have more than one child.
One thing we do not know is to what extent Marie Stopes is involved in Gendercide in China (or come to that in India) where there is a huge demand to destroy girl babies. In both countries there is no state old-age-pension and traditionally boys stay with their parents when they marry bringing their brides home. Thus parents are assured of being cared for in old age. If they wish to ensure that they do not die of starvation, couples (having to contend with the One-Child Policy) do all they can to have a boy. Girls are aborted, abandoned or put to death at birth. If they survived, by tradition, they would simply go to the home of the husband’s parents where they would be expected to care for them as they became more frail. It is not simply because the Chinese (and Hindu-Indians) are besotted with the idea of having boys – as we claim in the West. It is for the sake of survival that parents opt for boy children.
However the destruction of women will be disastrous for the future of the Chinese nation – which would be in keeping with the ideas of racists and elitists. In my young days, the Chinese were referred to as the “yellow peril” and exaggerated propaganda of couples “breeding” was continually peddled, terrifying some people. The fact is that the men now outnumber women by about 37 million. According to a paper in the British Medical Journal (add link) the overall sex ratio for China is 126 boys for every 100 girls. Nine provinces have ratios of 160 boys for every 100 girls.
In a speech to the House of Lords (June 9, 2010) on the issue, Lord David Alton of Liverpool said:
“The Economist described this as ‘Gendercide’. This gender imbalance is a major force driving sexual trafficking of women and girls in Asia.”
There is no hope of the Chinese building up their society for at least the next few generations or so. At the risk of being accused of regarding women as breeding machines, we have to face reality: you can have a hundred men – but if you have only one woman you will have only one baby each year. You need women to have babies – and if you have destroyed your women, you will have no babies to replace the generation.
Moreover, you would think that those who really care about women would consider the multiplicity of effects the Chinese one-child policy is having on individuals, quite apart from sex trafficking. It is a widely known fact (accepted by most people, excepting the pro-abortion lobby) that women who have had abortions are at a higher risk of self harm and committing suicide. To be subjected to coercive or even forced abortion must be absolutely devastating for the women involved. Suicides in China are extremely high and, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), China is the only country in the world where the rate of women committing suicide is higher than the rate for men. Wikipedia states when discussing the subject that:
“Suicide in the People's Republic of China is unique among countries of the world in that more women than men commit suicide each year: according to official government statistics, in 1999 the rate per 100,000 people was 13.0 for men and 14.8 for women... According to official government statistics the male rate (13.0 per 100,000 men per year) is lower than in many other countries, including some Western countries...”
The most recent World Health Organisation suicide table (giving the latest year available for different states as of 2009) gives the same rates for China per 100,000: 13.0 for men and 14.8 for women. Still the only country in the world with more women than men committing suicide. The figures work out at approximately 500 women a day who end their lives.
“This extraordinary suicide rate may well be related to the campaign of forced sterilisation and compulsory abortion.”
But nobody – least of all BPAS and MSI – seems minded to check.
