Sept 27, 2021: New abortion guidelines have been issued by the state after China decides to limit number of abortions for non-medical purposes.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, published the new rules on Monday.
The country has already taken drastic measures to prevent gender selective abortion, and health officials warned in 2018 that the use of abortion to eliminate unwanted attacks is harmful to women’s bodies and may even cause infertility. The state council said the new guidelines aim to improve women’s overall access to prenatal health care services.
It was not immediately clear whether Monday’s new measures were designed to tackle China’s declining birth rate, which think tanks and policy researchers have identified as a major social policy challenge for decades to come.
Although China is the world’s most populous country, recent censuses show that population growth from 2011 to 2020 was the slowest since the 1950s, and was expected to slow down further in the coming years.
In a marked policy shift, after years of trying to curb population growth, Beijing is now promising new policies aimed at encouraging families to have more children.
The state said in June that it would now allow all couples to have three children instead of two. New policies designed to reduce the financial burden of raising children are also being introduced.
According to analysis from a state think tank, in 2005 it cost $74,838 for a family in China to raise a child. By 2020, local media reported that the cost had risen to as high as $308,030, quadrupling the 2005 number.
On the other hand, most single mothers have been excluded from medical insurance and social welfare payments, and many worry that giving birth could harm their careers.
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