Mar 14, 2014 / 15:02 pm

The Population Research Institute has launched a new campaign to encourage effective human rights activism among those concerned about the victims of China's coercive one-child policy.

The institute has launched a webpage in conjunction with the release of the second edition of "A Mother's Ordeal" by institute president Steven Mosher. The book is a biography of a young enforcer of China's one-child policy who performed coerced abortions. She herself was forced to have an abortion after she became pregnant with a child in violation of the law.

"When I first read 'A Mother's Ordeal,' I frequently had to pause and take a deep breath," Anne Morse, the Population Research Institute's media coordinator, said March 13. "The atrocities told within its pages made my stomach churn. It made me want to do something, and I knew that other readers would be motivated to take action too."

Morse said that the institute launched its new activism web page to help others take action.

The page contains facts and educational resources about China's population control policy, which was mandated across the nation in 1979. Chinese officials say the policy has prevented 400 million births.

The policy has some exceptions allowing some couples to have more than one child. However, violators pay heavy fines and face other penalties. In some areas, authorities resort to forced abortion.

The policy has also had significant demographic side-effects, such as a rapidly aging population. Over 33 percent of Chinese residents are 50 years or older.

A Chinese cultural preference for boys means that some parents target unborn baby girls for abortion so that their only living child will be a boy. This practice skews the country's sex ratio, which is now 111 males for every 100 females. The imbalance has created demand for forced prostitution and sex trafficking.

The Population Research Institute has encouraged those concerned about the one-child policy and its victims to follow its work on what it says is "the myth of overpopulation." The institute also researches the promotion of abortion, abortifacient contraception, and sterilization in population control efforts. It advocates to defund such programs by exposing what it says is "the coercion, deception and racism inherent in them."

The institute's activism page recommends the organizations Women's Rights Without Frontiers and All Girls Allowed, both of which oppose the one-child policy. The activism page also recommends a petition and several short videos about coerced abortion and overpopulation.