One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

by Mei Fong

Their clientele were yuppies, many experiencing infertility because of delayed childbearing, like me. They had many cases of clients having difficulties conceiving, having scarred their tubes through multiple abortions. This was an unexpected byproduct of the one-child policy, because many use abortion as a form of birth control. For a nation so open about controlling one of the aftereffects of sex, the Chinese were surprisingly prudish when it came to teaching youngsters about the birds and the bees. Fewer than 1 percent of China’s schools provide sex education. The one-child policy regulated births on the assumption that all this procreation was going on between married couples. There was little leeway for underage pregnancy, or unmarried mothers, or women who’d simply gotten pregnant before the official waiting period elapsed. If it didn’t fit the rules, the policy’s answer was almost always: pay or abort.