A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One-child Policy
- ISBN-10
- 0151626626
- ISBN-13
- 9780151626625
- Category
- Social Science / Sociology / General
- Pages
- 335
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1993
- Publisher
- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
- Author
- Steven W. Mosher
Description
This dramatic narrative, told in the voice of a former population-control worker, reveals the steep price that China has exacted from its people to achieve its stunning decline in birthrate. Chi An, a serious student and dedicated party activist from Shenyang, Manchuria, was trained as a nurse during the Cultural Revolution. When the Chinese government launched its sweeping family-planning campaign during the early 1980s, Chi An - then a young mother - was recruited as a population-control worker. She was trained to enforce the "one-couple, one-child" policy through coercive peer counseling, pressuring uncooperative women to "think clear" about their pregnancies. She hunted down runaway women who were "illegally pregnant" and helped administer forced sterilizations, late-term abortions, and in cases where women carried their illegal fetuses to term, lethal injections at birth. Disturbed by a series of harrowing "birth-control" experiences, Chi An applied for a visa to join her husband, who was studying at a university in the U.S. Not long after she arrived in America, the tables were turned: Chi An found herself pregnant. Since Chi An and her family planned to return to China, she was forced to seek permission from Chinese officials to have a second child. The Chinese authorities responded with a resounding no, insisting that Chi An "fix this problem as soon as possible". After much anguished debate, Chi An and her husband decided to cut their ties to their homeland and applied to the U.S. government for asylum. America was not responsive and, instead, initiated deportation procedures. China expert Steven Mosher stepped in, helping Chi An win her case and ultimately effecting a policychange that protects families in similar situations. In a deeply compelling account that recreates the struggles of one woman from the other side of the globe, A Mother's Ordeal illuminates a successful, if frightening, program that is just beginning to make headlines in the West. At the same time it sheds significant light on the larger issue of choice, which is at the forefront of American political debate.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Childhood in Global Perspective
By Karen Wells... may be taken in by other family members or they may , as is increasingly the case in Africa , establish their own households , with the eldest children acting as heads of households ( Audemard and Vignikin 2006 ; Robson et al .
-
Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment
By Karen Kay Kirst-Ashman, Charles ZastrowIn this best-selling text BY social workers and FOR social workers, Charles Zastrow and Karen K. Kirst-Ashman, nationally prominent social work educators and authors, guide studetns in assessing and evaluating how individuals function ...
-
Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment
By Karen Kay Kirst-Ashman, Charles ZastrowKiev , A. ( 1980 , September ) . The courage to live . Cosmopolitan , pp . 301-308 . Kim , N. , Stanton , B. , Li , X. , Dickersin , K. , & Galbraith , J. ( 1997 ) . Effectiveness of the 40 adolescent AIDS - risk reduction interventions ...
-
Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology
By Susan J. FergusonCharrière , H. 1969. Papillon . Robert Lafont . ... 6 NOT OUR KIND OF GIRL ELAINE BELL KAPLAN Social research is concerned with the definition and assessment of social phenomena . Many social concepts such as teen pregnancy are ...
-
淡定的爱, 优雅的活
By （美）卡耐基, 张艾佳行走世间，唯有淡定不破：遇事不慌、遇人不躁，拥有淡定、优雅的心，你，就可以重生！——美国心灵教父戴尔 ...
-
Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas
By Karen KampwirthBooth, John. 1985. The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution. Boulder: Westview. Booth, John, and Thomas W. Walker. 1989. Understanding Central America. Boulder: Westview Borge, Tomás. 1984. Carlos, the Dawn Ls No Longer ...
-
Social Structure and Law: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives
By William M. EvanReaders will profit from studying this volume which sets forth a rationale for theoretical and empirical contributions to the sociology of law.
-
Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality
By Nell Irvin Painter, Homi K. Bhabha, Kimberlé CrenshawAs I wrote in a recent tribute to Justice Marshall: There appears to be a deliberate retrenchment by a majority of the current Supreme Court on many basic issues of human rights that Thurgood Marshall advocated and that the Warren and ...
-
The Civilizing Process
By Norbert EliasThe Civilizing Process
-
Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America
By Robert HughesCriticizes Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Jessie Helms, and Ronald Reagan, political correctness, academic obsessions with theory, the art world, American infrastructure, and other targets