Watch Insight’s episode Baby Drought on SBS On Demand
This story contains distressing content.
The birth of my only child in China in 1988 was one of my life’s happiest moments. But my time at the hospital’s birth unit was also very, very scary.
It still haunts me today.
At the time, China was under the ruthless grip of its notorious one-child policy, a draconian measure introduced in 1979 and enforced until 2015 to control population growth at any cost.
Helen fled China as a political refugee. Source: SBS
It was very tough and very harsh and I was intimately familiar with the rules. Contraceptives were readily available, and financial incentives offered to those who complied.
But behind this facade of compliance lay a darker truth — a reality of forced abortions, sterilisations and the systematic violation of women’s reproductive rights.
Dissenting voices were silenced, and women subjected to unimaginable agony.
‘A desperate plea for her unborn child’
The pain of one woman on the night of 3 August 1988 will forever be etched in my memory.
On the precipice of motherhood, I should have been full of joy and anticipation. Instead, I lay in a crowded hospital ward, surrounded by other expectant mothers, each of us grappling with our own fears and uncertainties.
A new arrival entered our midst who was very quiet. We tried to talk to her, but she didn’t want to engage.
Then when night fell, she started to weep, her anguished cries becoming increasingly piercing, cutting through the dark silence.
I remember tears streaming down her face, and us unable to console her.
Then when dawn broke on a new day, the woman was gone.
We later learned a doctor had injected her stomach to kill the baby, which was to be her second child.
Her cries had been a desperate plea for the life of her unborn child — a plea that would go unanswered in the face of state-sanctioned brutality.
Men without women
Countless others were subject to the same horrific fate.
Meanwhile, the preference in China for male heirs led many more women to willingly kill their babies in utero, and infant girls to be abandoned and left to languish in orphanages.
Now there’s a skewed gender ratio; many men in that age group can’t find partners. Some go to Cambodia or Vietnam to find a wife.
While the human toll of the one-child policy was severe, I also witnessed the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
Despite the hardships so many have endured, I remain steadfast in my belief that justice will prevail, that the voices of the oppressed will be heard, and that no government, however powerful, can extinguish the flame of freedom that burns within us all.
Helen’s son Nash with her two grandchildren Iris (left) and Louie (right). Source: SBS
Joy among pain
My story is also one of resilience and survival.
A few years after the birth of my son, I fled China and came to Australia as a political refugee.
I had to leave my son behind and for a year I was unable to see him, nor did I know whether or when I would see him again.
That guilt and sadness has stayed with me my whole life.
If it wasn’t for the one-child policy, I would have loved to have had another child.
But while the tough times never last, tough people always do.
My son joined me in Australia, I’ve had the joy of seeing him grow up and of having two grandchildren.
I carry with me the hope that one day, the shadows of the past will give way to a brighter future, one in which the rights and dignity of every individual are respected.
