Chinese Father Wants Officials Prosecuted for Wife's Forced Abortion
A father in China is seeking criminal prosecution against government officials after they forced his seven months pregnant wife to undergo an abortion last month.
Deng Jiyuan, a villager from central China's Shaanxi province, hired lawyer Zhang Kai to seek out criminal charges against officials responsible for ordering the abortion on his wife.
Along with criminal charges, Jiyuan is also seeking some sort of compensation, The Associated Press reports.
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Zhang Kai officially sent a legal petition on Friday requesting that police and government officials begin investigating criminal acts in the case.
As The Christian Post previously reported, Chinese authorities beat Jihuang's wife, Feng Jianmei, and forced her to abort her 7-month old fetus on June 3 because she and her husband could not pay the country's strict 40,000 yuan ($6,300) fine for having a second child.
China has maintained a strict One Child Policy for 35 years.
According to reports, officials forced Jianmei to sign an "abortion consent form," and then injected toxins into her female child's brain.
Jianmei then went into an extensive labor and delivered the deceased child on June 4.
Several human rights organizations expressed outrage over the incident, calling on China to end what is seen as a cruel policy.
The human rights organization Women's Rights Without Frontiers launched a petition to end abortion in the country shortly after Jianmei's tragedy, calling the forced abortion "an outrage."
"No legitimate government would commit or tolerate such an act," Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, said in a statement.
When recruited in June to legally defend Jianmei, Zhang Kai, a famed Christian Chinese lawyer, wrote in his blog that the forced abortion was "a crime against humanity."
"The tragic Zhenping case violates the most basic conscience of mankind," Kai wrote.
"I cannot accept this kind of blatant murder in the land we that we live in. To ignore it is, I think, is to be no different than the murder. This is a crime against humanity," he added.
Although Chinese authorities have apologized for the incident, with two officials being fired and five being sanctioned this past week, the international community continues to push the ban on the One Child Policy and forced abortions.
On Thursday, the European Parliament issued a resolution which "strongly condemned" Jianmei's treatment and the country's use of forced abortions.
According to Inquirer News, the European Parliament said the forced abortion practice has "created an imbalance between the numbers of men and women, negatively impacting all of Chinese society."
Although abortions in China are illegal beyond six months, sex-selected abortions are still widely practiced.
