One of the witnesses, Chinese mother Sarah Huang, became pregnant with her second child before the new policy announcement and explained how she traveled to the U.S. to have her child because of her fear of a forced abortion. The Chinese authorities, along with paid informants, brutally enforce the law by forcing mothers who do not obtain permission to become pregnant to abort their children and be sterilized.
"My husband and I wanted a second child for many years," Huang stated in her written testimony to the CECC, and they were "very happy" when she was pregnant with their second child and when the two-child policy was announced.
However, her husband's employer, the Chinese government, informed him that they would have to abort the child because the couple did not meet the requirements of the new policy. They threatened him with a deadline.
The couple flew to the U.S. to have the child, and Huang said they could face a fine back in China equaling $36,000.
Human rights abuses will still be rampant under the two-child policy, she insisted. Women will be subject to forced contraception and sterilization, the notorious family planning bureau will still exist under another name, families will still abort unborn girls in order to have a son to carry on the family name, and "black clinics" will enable gendercide by carrying illegal ultrasound machines so parents can discover the sex of the child, she said.
"I believe this is one of the most tragic events of modern world history," she said in her testimony. "As we are the ones who are aware of what is happening in China, we have an inherent responsibility to act."
The new policy is "not going to resolve the problems in the countryside of China," testified Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers. The sterilizations that are forced upon Chinese women will continue, and they "ruin a women's health," she said in her testimony before the CECC. Women are permanently disabled after sterilizations so that they can't even perform hard tasks on the family farms.
China's record on religious freedom is also among the worst in the world. The U.S. State Department has designated it as a "Country of Particular Concern" each year since 1999 for its severe and ongoing abuses of religious freedom. The government has detained and fined members of different faiths and has even destroyed churches and houses of worship.
Over 400 Christian churches were torn down, desecrated, or destroyed in 2014, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. There are five state-sanctioned religions, "patriotic religious associations," but faith leaders of both registered and non-registered churches have been met with harassment and arrest by the government.
Members of Falun Gong, a religious practice, are seen by the government as part of an "evil cult" and have been subject to torture, organ-harvesting, psychiatric experimentation by the government.
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.