In mid-2012, global media picked up the story of a forced late-term abortion in the northwest Shaanxi province of China after a husband posted the picture of his wife and her aborted fetus. Within a month, several such stories surfaced. The most brutal was New York Times’ story of a woman who was picked up during a visit to a grocery story, locked up and forced to sign a consent form for a later-term abortion.

These forced abortions result from China’s one-child policy passed in 1979 to stagger the growth of population. In recent times, such policies have been criticized globally for forcing women to discontinue their pregnancies against their will. But while this control on women’s lives deserves much criticism, the situation also begs another question: Why are national laws that force women to continue their pregnancies against their will not viewed with the same amount of criticism. Or in other words, is the global outrage against the forced abortions, directed against the abortion and not at the control of women’s bodies?

While on the one hand China has seen much economic progress, the country is not entirely free from the shackles of patriarchy. Gender roles are imposed on young girls, and along with it the idea that women are meant to be mothers. This cultural imposition that finds parallels in all world cultures, making it easier for the world and for China to identify how tragic the one-child policy must be for women in China, who are forced to prevent pregnancies or have abortions after the birth against their wish. On the other hand, this very construct of motherhood, becomes a barrier in identifying the pain caused to women by the denial of abortion. And in China like in other countries, maternal deaths from unsafe abortion are rendered less visible, or tucked away in the shadow of forced abortions.

Does unsafe abortion occur in China? In 2008, the Guttmacher Institute conducted research which showed that more than half of the safe abortions in Asia occur in China. This is not surprising since China has a very liberal abortion law, even if it was passed with the intent of reducing population. Yet, unsafe abortions also occur, mostly because of an attempt to clandestinely terminate an unwanted, stigmatized pregnancy, or because of the lack of accurate information about modern methods and access to safe abortion. Unfortunately these less widely spoken about. A UNFPA supported national survey showed that less than 5% of young people are informed about reproductive health services in their provinces. Another survey conducted by ASAP Youth Champion Yu Yang showed that over 46% of the peer educators in universities, who are focal points for sex-education, are also less aware of safe abortion than they are of other RH issues. 66% cannot identify the difference between Misoprostol and Mifepristone. This lack of information about safe abortion is also in fact the result of an abortion law created only to ensure a reduction in population, but not to ensure women’s autonomy.

Recently China toned down the one-child policy, and another New York Times article showed that while women feel relieved that a second pregnancy would not be illegal, not all of them want more than one child. It remains to be seen then, if women are actually able to exercise their right to motherhood and safe abortion equally, now that the second pregnancy has become a choice for some women.