First National Family Planning Law Highlights Humanitarianism

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 02, 2002

First National Family Planning Law Highlights Humanitarianism

China's first Population and Family Planning Law, which formally came into effect Sunday, has been applauded as humanitarian as it gives prominence to the rights and interests of citizens.

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China's first Population and Family Planning Law, which formally came into effect Sunday, has been applauded as humanitarian as it gives prominence to the rights and interests of citizens.

"As China's first basic law concerning population and family planning, it focuses on the all-around development of human beings," said Zhang Weiqing, director of the State Family Planning Commission (SFPC).

With the legislation's aim of maintaining harmony between population and socio-economic development as well as realizing sustainable development, the new law was regarded as a milestone in the country's family planning policy, Zhang added.

The new law stipulated that family planning should include increasing women's education and employment opportunities, protecting their health and raising their status, he said.

The law particularly underlines preferential favor for households abiding by the state family planning policies. It also strictly prohibits the abuse of authority, illegal administration, coercive imperatives and other practices infringing on the interests of citizens during family planning.

Since the state law only makes stipulations regarding China's overall situation, the drafting of specific administrative and service systems and measures at grass-roots level is delegated to local legislative departments.

With a population of 90 million, central China's Henan province, the country's most populous, has made a second amendment to the local population and family planning regulations according to the state law.

"While fixing the current population policies, the new legislation emphasizes protecting the legal rights and interests of citizens as well as strengthening related services," said one of the officials amending the regulations.

He added that the new regulations were more endowed with humanitarian connotations.

According to the regulations, if a couple marries late before having a child, the wife's maternity leave can be prolonged for another three months and the husband may also have a one-month nursing vacation.

In rural areas, contracted farmlands allocated to parents with only one child will be doubled. Rural households complying with the family planning policies can also get preferential treatment in the distribution of collective income and welfare.

In addition, local rules stress that governmental departments should provide technical and health-care services regarding child bearing, birth control and sterility with the operation paid for by local governments.

Areas all over the country are stepping up the formulation or amendment of local population and family planning regulations, in which strict, compelling words like "forbidden" and "must" almost disappear or appear much less.

Many provinces are simplifying the complex application procedures for having a child and legally allowing parents in certain special circumstances to have more than one child.

Southwest China's Yunnan province, for instance, has worked out new legislation to increase health protection subsidies for only children, offering free health examinations if they are in rural families and other aid.

New regulations in southern Guangdong Province echo the prohibition of identifying a fetus' gender and selective artificial pregnancy without proper medical need, which is distinctly defined in the state law.

Guangdong regulations specify that people who induce abortion without official approval will not be permitted to reproduce again, effectively curbing abortions just because parents want a boy.

China has made substantial achievements in controlling excessive population growth through the adjustment of local policies and regulations. It is estimated the country would have 300 million more people if calculated at the growth rate of three decades ago.

Men's rights stipulated

Men's rights in family planning are for the first time clearly stipulated in China's Population and Family Planning Law.

The law was adopted late last year at the 25th session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress.

The new law stipulates that all citizens, regardless of gender,have a right to have children of their own. Both men and women are responsible for birth control and men will get legal support if their partners have abortions without their consent.

The Law on Protection of Women's Rights, already in place for years, says women in China are entitled to the right to have children in accordance with state regulations and also have the right not to have children.

But men's right to have children were not clearly defined. So when disputes on the rights of reproduction came to courts, only the Marriage Law and Civil Affairs Law were relevant.

"Chinese laws have never stripped men of their right to reproduction," said Xu Anqi, an associate researcher with ShanghaiAcademy of Social Sciences, who explained the emphasis of women's right to reproduction in law in the past was made in a bid to protect women.

Sun Xiaoying, associate researcher with Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regional Academy of Social Sciences, admitted women shouldered more responsibility and risks than men in reproduction,including pregnancy, giving birth and breast feeding, which can not be borne by men, but the past practice of entrusting wives with the right to decide reproduction to some extent harmed men's interests.

Zeng Qianghua, an official with the family planning committee of Guangxi, said reproduction was a shared responsibility, so major issues such as whether to have a child and whether to have an abortion should be decided by both partners.

However, a woman surnamed Liu insisted reproduction was a private matter, to be decided according to a couple's circumstances, so consensus could not always be achieved.

"If husband and wife have not reached a consensus over reproduction, then the wife's action to have an abortion on her own would not constitute an infringement on the rights of her husband," said Liu.

With women's increasing independence and changing concepts of parenthood, more Chinese women are choosing not to have children.

Statistics show 10 percent of eligible men and women have chosen not to have children in the Chinese capital, Beijing, and 600,000 families in the cities of Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai are dinkies -- double income, no kids couples.

Song Jianping, a lawyer, believes there is always the possibility that one partner of a dinky couple changes his or her mind and wants a child, which might eventually land them in a reproductive dispute.

China, with a population of 1.3 billion, is now among the countries with the lowest birth rates in the world.

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