Abortion in China
[4] China was one of the first developing countries to permit abortion when the pregnant woman's health was at risk and make it easily accessible under these circumstances in the 1950s.
In the past, virtually universal access to contraception and abortion for its citizens by a national government service was a common way for China to contain its population in accordance with its now-defunct one-child policy.
[8] In 2022, in an effort to boost the country's birth rate, the National Health Commission announced that it would direct measures toward reducing non-medically necessary abortions through a number of measures, including expanded pre-pregnancy healthcare, infant care services, and local government efforts to boost family-friendly work places.
[9]: 8 In the Mao era, for example, government debates generally revolved around the relationship between population size and economic development and disagreements over the efficacy of various family planning mechanisms.
[9]: 5 In China's Republican era, the state emulated the late Qing dynasty reformers and Western governments in imposing a blanket ban on abortion.
[9]: 5 At the PRC's founding, the government's view was that more workers were needed to overcome the burdens of China's semi-colonial period and the warfare of the Republican era.
[9]: 77 In the view of these reformers, duotai was associated with backward and illegal procedures performed under capitalism, while rengong lichuan conveyed a sense of scientific advancement and modernity.
[9]: 77 In 1953, the Ministry of Health under Li Dequan prepared the Regulation of Contraception and Induced Abortion which legalized access to the services in certain conditions.
[9]: 5 In 1954 and 1956, the 1953 law was extended to include other pre-existing illnesses and disabilities, such as hypertension and epilepsy, as well as allowing women working in certain types of occupations to qualify.
[9]: 79 In the 1950s, high-level female Communist Party cadre had a significant role in advocating for greater access to abortion and sterilization surgeries -- in their view, women could not "hold up half the sky" nor advance their revolutionary work if they had too many children.
[15][16][17] The State Council authorized workers and work unit staff in large cities to have abortions or sterilization surgeries if giving birth would be detrimental to health, although implementation of this policy at local levels was uneven.
[9]: 98 Later that year, the State Council also legalized abortion and sterilization for healthy workers, although their medical costs were required to be paid out-of-pocket.
[5] The proliferation of barefoot doctors, who were frequently sent-down youth, in the early 1970s increased abortion access in rural China.
[9]: 184 Field work conducted by academic Sarah Mellors Rodriguez suggests that promotion of this initiative may have been uneven, as many of her interviewees were unaware of these policies at the time.
[21] The organization recommended that provincial governments should aim to reduce the number of abortions performed for "non-medical purposes" and promote instead alternate methods of contraception and birth control, and increase spending on social programs aimed at improving access to pre-pregnancy health care services and post-childbirth family planning services.
[25][21] In August 2022, the National Health Commission announced that it would direct measures toward "reducing abortions that are not medically necessary" in an effort to boost the country's birth rate.
[19][31] In 1986, the National Commission for Family Planning and the Ministry of Health prohibited prenatal sex determination except when diagnosing hereditary diseases.
Other policies include controlling the marketing of ultrasonic B machines and improving the systems used by medical and family planning organizations to report on births, abortions, and pregnancies.
[9]: 10 For much of the 20th century, intentional overdose of the malaria medicine quinine was a common method for women in China (as well as other countries) to terminate a pregnancy.
[9]: 1 Pharmacist interviews conducted by academic Sarah Mellors Rodriguez in 2019 suggest that use of over-the-counter medications and the Morning-after pill have largely replaced usage of herbal abortifacients.
Since at least 2001, China has banned drugstore sales of mifepristone (RU-486) tablets, while the drug can be procured and used legally under the care of a doctor at a certified hospital.
