Chen Guangcheng is the Chinese lawyer and human rights activist who famously managed to escape house arrest and the country of China to land in New York City and a fellowship at New York University to study law. The fact that he is blind (and quite telegenic in his dark sunglasses) made his escape even more remarkable and compelling.
The American dream honeymoon is over. He is leaving New York University after a year and he is looking for a new position, and there are conflicting stories as to what happened. What is more clear is that Mr. Chen is struggling to adjust to the polarized atmosphere of American politics and how that polarization is represented by, and intensified by, divisions over reproductive politics.
Mr. Chen's story involves reproductive politics because of his activism against forced abortion and government abuses associated with China's one-child policy. Pro-life activists strongly oppose China's one-child policy in itself. They also are outraged by the abuse of the policy, in particular the phenomenon of local officials pressuring and/or forcing women to have abortions to meet population incentives and/or directives from higher up in the political food chain.
Pressured or forced abortion is a practice that many pro-choice activists oppose, too, as China represents another form of anti-choice in its vigorous attempts to limit population growth. It is entirely possible, in other words, to be both pro-choice and anti-one-child-policy.
This distinction tends to be lost in the American public discourse over China's policy, especially among pro-life activists. American pro-lifers see China's policy as the end of the pro-choice slippery slope: This is what happens when we embrace the 'culture of death,' utilitarian ethics, and population explosion panic!
One wing of the original pro-choice movement in the United States was in fact mainly concerned about population control, and early, well-intentioned efforts to promote population control, in the late 1960s and 1970s, did have a kind of "we have to meet our target numbers" flavor-- seeing women in the third world as (exaggerating a bit here) baby-making machines that needed to be dialed back a bit. China's government, as is its wont historically, took the blunt instrument approach to population control to its extreme.
(And, even earlier, in the American 'voluntary motherhood' and birth control movements in the Progressive and New Deal eras, there was some concern among political elites about the drop in birth rates among middle-class and upper-class whites in conjunction with a high birth rate among working-class and/or "ethnic"/immigrant groups. Birth control was seen by some as a way to even the score and limit population growth by what they deemed the less desirable parts of the population.)
Among first-world governments and NGOs, the older perspective has been largely abandoned. American and international organizations that promote family planning were positively modified by a feminist, human rights perspective on population control that focuses on choice-- giving women and families in all countries the autonomy and resources to make choices for themselves regarding the timing, spacing, and ultimate number of children they wish to have. The results of choice-based family planning is that birth rates drop to good levels and families and societies are healthier. Girls and women also benefit from choice-based family planning, as they receive more resources and equal treatment within their own families.
If you read pro-life literature and the pro-life press, you'll see that they haven't gotten the memo. They still see China as the final result of 'pro-abortion' activism and thinking, rather than an affront to basic pro-choice principles.
Back to Mr. Chen. American pro-life activists see Mr. Chen as a great symbol of their cause and would like to claim him for their own.
The danger for Mr. Chen is that affiliating and/or receiving support from American pro-life activists might typecast him as being primarily pro-life-- which he may not be-- rather than pro-freedom and pro-democracy. Mr. Chen could lose his broad appeal and his support among human rights activists on the left. Perhaps sensing this danger, Mr. Chen has been circumspect about his own views on abortion.
It is ironic and unfortunate that Mr. Chen, in escaping China to arrive in the land of the free, finds himself trapped again.
Links:
Article in The New York Times (July 10, 2013): After Epic Escape From China, Exile Is Mired in Partisan U.S.
For a good history and summary of American population control efforts and the human rights, pro-choid view of family planning, see the following resources:
The American dream honeymoon is over. He is leaving New York University after a year and he is looking for a new position, and there are conflicting stories as to what happened. What is more clear is that Mr. Chen is struggling to adjust to the polarized atmosphere of American politics and how that polarization is represented by, and intensified by, divisions over reproductive politics.
Mr. Chen's story involves reproductive politics because of his activism against forced abortion and government abuses associated with China's one-child policy. Pro-life activists strongly oppose China's one-child policy in itself. They also are outraged by the abuse of the policy, in particular the phenomenon of local officials pressuring and/or forcing women to have abortions to meet population incentives and/or directives from higher up in the political food chain.
Pressured or forced abortion is a practice that many pro-choice activists oppose, too, as China represents another form of anti-choice in its vigorous attempts to limit population growth. It is entirely possible, in other words, to be both pro-choice and anti-one-child-policy.
This distinction tends to be lost in the American public discourse over China's policy, especially among pro-life activists. American pro-lifers see China's policy as the end of the pro-choice slippery slope: This is what happens when we embrace the 'culture of death,' utilitarian ethics, and population explosion panic!
One wing of the original pro-choice movement in the United States was in fact mainly concerned about population control, and early, well-intentioned efforts to promote population control, in the late 1960s and 1970s, did have a kind of "we have to meet our target numbers" flavor-- seeing women in the third world as (exaggerating a bit here) baby-making machines that needed to be dialed back a bit. China's government, as is its wont historically, took the blunt instrument approach to population control to its extreme.
(And, even earlier, in the American 'voluntary motherhood' and birth control movements in the Progressive and New Deal eras, there was some concern among political elites about the drop in birth rates among middle-class and upper-class whites in conjunction with a high birth rate among working-class and/or "ethnic"/immigrant groups. Birth control was seen by some as a way to even the score and limit population growth by what they deemed the less desirable parts of the population.)
Among first-world governments and NGOs, the older perspective has been largely abandoned. American and international organizations that promote family planning were positively modified by a feminist, human rights perspective on population control that focuses on choice-- giving women and families in all countries the autonomy and resources to make choices for themselves regarding the timing, spacing, and ultimate number of children they wish to have. The results of choice-based family planning is that birth rates drop to good levels and families and societies are healthier. Girls and women also benefit from choice-based family planning, as they receive more resources and equal treatment within their own families.
If you read pro-life literature and the pro-life press, you'll see that they haven't gotten the memo. They still see China as the final result of 'pro-abortion' activism and thinking, rather than an affront to basic pro-choice principles.
Back to Mr. Chen. American pro-life activists see Mr. Chen as a great symbol of their cause and would like to claim him for their own.
The danger for Mr. Chen is that affiliating and/or receiving support from American pro-life activists might typecast him as being primarily pro-life-- which he may not be-- rather than pro-freedom and pro-democracy. Mr. Chen could lose his broad appeal and his support among human rights activists on the left. Perhaps sensing this danger, Mr. Chen has been circumspect about his own views on abortion.
It is ironic and unfortunate that Mr. Chen, in escaping China to arrive in the land of the free, finds himself trapped again.
Links:
Article in The New York Times (July 10, 2013): After Epic Escape From China, Exile Is Mired in Partisan U.S.
For a good history and summary of American population control efforts and the human rights, pro-choid view of family planning, see the following resources:
- Michelle Goldberg, The Means of Reproduction
- Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky
- United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of World Population 2012 report: By Choice, Not by Chance: Family Planning, Human Rights, and Development
An iconic work by a (now) pro-life activist who helped to expose abuses of China's one-child policy is A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One-Child Policy, by Steven W. Mosher
Steven W. Mosher is now president of the Population Research Institute, which is devoted to arguing that overpopulation is a "myth" and fighting "coercive population control."
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