Many factors contribute to high number of abortions in China, scholars say

The New York Times' "IHT Rendezvous" blog examines factors contributing to the more than 13 million abortions that occur in China every year, the highest number of any country worldwide. Though China's so-called "one-child policy" is a contributing factor, "with women coerced into aborting 'out of plan' children by the threat of heavy fines or the loss of a job -- or, in some cases, physically forced to abort," some "scholars are now pointing to a new factor -- under-25 women who, if they are unmarried, do not directly fall within the remit of the family planners," the blog writes. A recent survey by China's Research Institute of the National Population and Family Planning Commission estimates six million abortions occur annually among this group, the blog adds. This highlights other issues, the blog notes, including young people's increased sexual freedoms and a culture and tradition that remains reluctant to discuss sex education, leaving young women without the knowledge of how to use contraception. "Yet gradually, people are beginning to talk more openly about what had long often been discussed only in absolute privacy," the blog writes and provides some examples (Tatlow, 10/19).