A personal testimony regarding China's practice of forced abortion

The following is excerpted from a statement by a Chinese woman, Wujian (an alias), before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 10, 2009.

My name is Wujian. I was born in a small village in northern China. ...

It was the spring of 2004 when I found out that I was pregnant. It was beautiful to sense this life growing inside of me: what a miracle! Meanwhile, I was also very fearful since I did not have the permit for pregnancy or the birth permit, which means, according to Chinese law, this baby was not allowed to be born into this world. During that time in my hometown, this was the law decided by the Chinese family planning policy ...

Pretty soon, my lower stomach began to bulge. In order to protect my baby, I had to hide myself in a very old, shabby house in a remote area. There was no electricity at all in the room ... Fear and loneliness filled me every day, but as long as I could have my baby, I could stand anything. ...

Eventually, the family planning government officials found out about my pregnancy. So they searched all over trying to arrest me, and while they could not find me, then they caught my father instead. They put my father into the detention center and beat him every day. On the fourth day after they caught my father, one neighbor came and told me that my father was dying: they would continue beating my father -- even to death -- until I went to the local hospital to get abortion. ...

Very soon after this, the worst thing happened: when several family planning government officials broke into the house where I was hiding, and without any words, they drug me into their van.

As soon as I got into the van, I found that another mom was already inside the van. She told me she was carrying her first baby, and that she was 28 years old. She did not have the permit of pregnancy or the birth permit, and she was 7 months pregnant. She was so eager to keep this baby that she was fighting with the government officers in the van. Suddenly, one government official in his 20's slapped her on the face and immediately her mouth began to bleed. Being thus insulted, she screamed like a lion and fought with the family planning government officials.

About one hour later, the van stopped in the hospital. As soon as I was drug out of the van, I saw hundreds of pregnant moms there -- all of them just like pigs in the slaughterhouse. Immediately I was drug into a special room, and without any preliminary medical examination, one nurse did an oxytocin injection intravenously. Then I was put into a room with several other moms.

The room was full of moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some moms were crying, some moms were mourning, some moms were screaming, and one mom was rolling on the floor with unbearable pain. ...

I was pulled into another small room. One nurse pulled out one big, 8-inch long needle for the intramuscular injection. ...

At that moment, I was the only mom in the room. I began begging the nurse while I cried, "I have already had the oxytocin injection, please let me go; I will go as far away as possible and I will not tell anyone else what you had done for me and I will be grateful for you for the rest of me life." The nurse did not respond to my begging -- she looked like wood.

Then I kept saying to her, "You are an angel, as a nurse or a doctor who is helping people and saving people's life; how could you become a killer by killing people every day?" ... Soon she became very angry at what I said, and told me that I talked too much. She also told me that there was nothing serious about this whole thing for her. She did these all year. She also told me that there were over 10,000 forced abortions in our county [county, not country] just for that year, and I was having just one of them. I was astonished by her words and I realized that my baby and I were just like a lamb on the cutting board. Finally, she put the big, long needle into the head of my baby in the womb. At the moment, it was the end of the world for me and I felt even time had stopped. ...

After the injection, my baby became very quiet for a whole day. I was so naive that I thought I could leave the hospital because I had finished the forced injection. I wondered if perhaps my baby was lucky enough that she could survive.

To my great surprise, the next evening I was drug into a surgical room. ... While I was lying down on the surgical table I found that there was bloody fingerprints on the wall, left by other moms during their surgery of a forced abortion.

One doctor told me that I brought too much trouble to them already because my baby was supposed to flow out by itself after the injection. Since it did not come out as expected, they decided to cut my baby into pieces in my womb with scissors, and then suck it out with a special machine.

What had I done in my life that made me deserve this kind of punishment? What evil thing was this all about? Even a wild animal like a tiger will give her life to save her own baby tiger. As a mom and a human being, could I not even protect the life of my baby? ...

I could hear the sound of the scissors cutting the body of my baby in my womb. ... I preferred to die together with my baby at that moment. ...

Eventually the journey in hell, the surgery was finished, and one nurse showed me part of a bloody foot with tweezers. Through my tears, the picture of the bloody foot was engraved into my eyes and into my heart, and so clearly I could see the five small bloody toes. Immediately the baby was thrown into a trash can. ...

Finally, I was allowed to go home from the hospital. I did not eat anything, or even drink any water, for several days. I barely talked with anyone. From time to time at home, I could hear the mourning of my father. He was released after I was caught, but he had been beaten terribly; it took him over a month to recover physically. Looking at my father, thinking of my dead baby, I cried day and night, and frequently the picture of the little bloody foot came up in my mind. Physically I recovered after about one month, but psychologically and spiritually -- never! ...

I know that there are millions of Chinese sisters who are suffering and will suffer the same thing that I suffered. Who can help them? Who can save them? The one-child policy and forced abortion policy have killed millions of innocent lives in China. How can this inhumane crime be stopped? When can this inhumane crime be stopped?