China, on Monday, issued new guidelines limiting the number of abortions performed for ‘non-medical purposes’. The country’s government in 2018 warned that abortions performed to end unwanted pregnancies was harmful to a woman’s body and could affect fertility. China had had also passed laws to prevent sex-selective abortions, which were rampant when the one-child policy existed. Since then, intending to increase birth rates, the country passed a bill allowing couples to have two children in 2016 and in June 2021, a bill was passed, allowing couples to have up to three children. Even so, China remains the world’s most populous nation.
According to the state council, the new guidelines aim in making pre-pregnancy and healthcare services more accessible to women. Experts have blamed changing attitudes on the slumps in the birth rate.
China currently faces a demographic crisis. The population growth in 2010 and 2011 was the slowest since the 1950s. The fertility rate fell from 1.6 live births per woman in 2015 to 1.3 in 2020.
As per the National Bureau of Statistics, by 2050, 39 per cent of China’s total population will be over the retirement age. The Chinese government is also devising policies to reduce the financial burden of raising children.
Between 1971 to 2013, in a bid to contain population growth, besides using contraceptives and sterilisations, the government performed 336 million abortions.