In 1979, the one-child policy was instituted. It gave Provincial government the mandate to impose penalty fees on families that had more than one child. It also imposed very intrusive contraceptive measures that included forced sterilization and abortion. According to the 1966 Declaration on Population it is a human right to be able to determine freely the size of one’s family. In the West, population control has been more successful and less coercive and abusive than in China since in the West there are no legal interdictions for the size of a family other than economic constraints. In China on the other hand, population control methods have been quite brutal. In 2001, 20,000 abortions and sterilizations were inflicted upon pregnant women of a remote, rural and poor area in the region of Huaiji. Government officials forcibly subjected women in this region to ultrasounds that would determine if they were pregnant and if the results were affirmative they conducted abortions on the spot, regardless of the age of the fetus. Many of them were also subjected to forced sterilization in order to avoid future pregnancies.
