China's Quake Mums Given Green Light For More Babies

Sun Herald

Sunday January 18, 2009

By TINI TRAN Beijing

HUNDREDS of women who lost their only child in last year's earthquake are pregnant again after receiving a special exemption to the nation's strict population controls.

A total of 757 women who lost children in the May 12 earthquake are expecting a child, National Population and Family Planning Commission officials said. The exemptions to China's "one-child policy" were to provide solace to grieving couples.

The Sichuan provincial population commission said more than 10,000 families lost children in the 7.9-magnitude quake, Xinhua news agency reported. Officials said 5724 mothers who lost children were given free reproductive services, including counselling, guidance, health exams, sterilisation reversals and fertility treatments.

Under China's strict population policy - in effect for more than three decades - most urban couples can have only one child. Rural couples are allowed two children if the first is a girl, in a nod to traditional preferences.

The quake killed 70,000 people and another 18,000 were missing, presumed dead. Many of those who died were children who were crushed when their badly built classrooms collapsed.

Meanwhile, a court in central China has sentenced a woman to death for hiring someone to strangle her nine-year-old son so she could have a child with her new husband.

© 2009 Sun Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home