China has issued new guidelines limiting the number of abortions performed for “non-medical purposes.”
The country has already adopted strict measures aimed at preventing sex-selective abortions, and health authorities also warned in 2018 that using abortion to end unwanted pregnancies was harmful to women’s bodies and risked causing infertility.
The State Council said the new guidelines will aim to improve women’s overall access to pre-pregnancy health care services.
Data from the National Health Commission showed that between 2014 and 2018, there were an average of 9.7 million abortions per year, up about 51 percent from the 2009-2013 average despite a easing of family planning policies in 2015. The data did not specify how many abortions were for medical reasons.
It was not immediately clear whether Monday’s new measures were designed to address the declining birth rate in China, which study groups and policy researchers have identified as one of the major social policy challenges in the coming decades.
Although China remains the most populous nation in the world, the latest census showed that population growth from 2011 to 2020 was the slowest since the 1950s, and was expected to slow even further within a few years.
After years of trying to limit population growth, Beijing is now promising new policies aimed at encouraging families to have more children.
(Outney)
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