China Policy Aims to Reduce ‘Inferior’ Births

China will use abortions, sterilization and marriage bans to “avoid new births of inferior quality and heighten the standards of the whole population,” the official New China News Agency said this week.

The measures will be aimed at people likely to pass on congenital illnesses or defects to their children, the agency said. It added that the birth of more than 10 million people with such defects could have been prevented.

China’s population policy has drawn extensive international criticism with its one-child-per-family rule and allegations of coercion in enforcing it. But the new measures, announced Monday, appear to go far beyond normal family planning standards.

Under draft legislation titled “On Eugenics and Health Protection” submitted to the National People’s Congress, people with hepatitis, venereal disease or mental illness will be barred from marrying, the news agency said.

Pregnant women diagnosed as having certain infectious diseases or abnormal fetuses “will be advised to halt the pregnancy,” the agency said. The draft bill says married couples with those illnesses or mental disabilities “should have themselves sterilized,” it added.

Once legislation reaches the draft stage and is submitted to the National People’s Congress, approval is usually automatic.

The Public Health Ministry did not spell out how the measures would be implemented, but the impact could be widespread. A large portion of the population carries the hepatitis virus, often contracted from eating contaminated food or using contaminated needles. In addition, there are 10.2 million mentally disabled people in China, the government-run People’s Daily reported Tuesday.

Citing the annual birth of 300,000 to 460,000 congenitally disabled children every year, Public Health Minister Chen Min Zhang told the National People’s Congress standing committee that there is an urgent need to reduce the number of abnormal births.