A woman in China is making legal history by suing authorities who forced her to have an abortion despite being nine months pregnant.
The Telegraph reports that Jin Yani’s waters had already broken when China’s abortion police came for her. They took her to a nearby abortion centre, injected her unborn baby girl and removed the body two days later.
Mrs Jin’s crime was to have become pregnant by her fiance five months before she married him at the age of 20, the legal minimum.
Pregnancy outside marriage is illegal. But forced abortions are now supposed to be illegal in China.
In a blow against the state’s brutally imposed one-child policy, she and her husband are claiming danmages against the authorities, saying that officials acted unlawfully.
China’s higher courts have agreed to hear the plea – the first time this has happened in a case of this kind.
Yang Zhongchen, her husband, tried to prevent the abortion by wining and dining officials in Hebei province. He also agreed to pay a fine of £650, but none of this prevented Changli county family planning officials arriving on Sept 7, 2000.
