State-Based Family Planning Meets Family-Based Family Planning

Kerry Howley | June 4, 2007

With cheap, widely available chemical assistance, Chinese women are subverting the one-child policy:

A woman can only give birth once.

So, four years ago, Jiao Na got pregnant and gave birth to a son, Bei Bei.

And then a few minutes later she had a daughter, Jin Jin, then another son Huan Huan, a second daughter, Ying Ying, and finally another girl, Ni Ni.

She and her husband beat China's one-child policy by having quintuplets.

No-one here in Buffalo village wants to say it openly, but privately families admit they use fertility drugs to get round the one-child limit.

Because of the fertility drugs, this village has more twins on one single street than you would expect to find in the entire village.

Whole BBC report here.  

Comments

|6.4.07 @ 1:48PM|#

What? People finding ways to beat a gub'ment-posed limit on something they want?

Impossible!

|6.4.07 @ 1:56PM|#

......more siamese twins, that is.

Jennifer|6.4.07 @ 2:04PM|#

That is damned clever. Good for the Chinese parents.

Zinger|6.4.07 @ 2:18PM|#

Bei Bei, Jin Jin, Huan Huan, Ying Ying, Ni Ni...

Are we sure this woman doesn't just have a stutter?

Rhywun|6.4.07 @ 2:28PM|#

3 girls and 2 boys? Well, 2 for 5 ain't bad.

|6.4.07 @ 3:41PM|#

Bei Bei, Jin Jin, Huan Huan, Ying Ying, Ni Ni...

You see, Jiao Na is a panda.




And now you know the rest of he story.

Papa Ooo Mao Mao|6.4.07 @ 3:43PM|#

The policy is still "one child", not "one full-term pregnancy". The state could demand an abortion as soon as they discover the pregnancy will result in multiple children.

Chucklehead|6.4.07 @ 3:44PM|#

This story just sucks all around.

Government policy of one kid only is the major suckyness, but the fact that these people are resorting to fertility drugs to have multiple babies at once, so they can run their farms better, is also pretty sad. And of course, the couple in the story had to give a daughter away since they couldn't afford to feed her.

There is no bright side to this story at all.

|6.4.07 @ 3:53PM|#

Chucklehead says: "Government policy of one kid only is the major suckyness, but the fact that these people are resorting to fertility drugs to have multiple babies at once, so they can run their farms better, is also pretty sad. And of course, the couple in the story had to give a daughter away since they couldn't afford to feed her.

There is no bright side to this story at all."

People fighting back against an overwhelmingly statist government? Cheered me up immensely.

Chucklehead|6.4.07 @ 4:13PM|#

jh,

I'm all for telling the State to fuck off.

However, popping out five kids because you need farmhands, and then giving one away because you can't afford to feed her is nothing to be happy about.

|6.4.07 @ 5:06PM|#

de stijl-

You took the joke I was going to make, and brought it to a level I hadn't even thought of. Hats off to you.

|6.4.07 @ 5:35PM|#

I have to agree with Chucklehead.

Jennifer|6.4.07 @ 6:52PM|#

By Chinese standards, giving the girl to a relative rather than killing her off is actually pretty damned good.

I wish I were kidding.

However, popping out five kids because you need farmhands, and then giving one away because you can't afford to feed her is nothing to be happy about.

In an ideal world, no. In a rural Chinese village under the current system, it's an improvement over what the government would otherwise allow.

|6.4.07 @ 6:52PM|#

Something funny's going on here. Those five kids have the same name as the mascots for the 2008 Olympics. I'm not sure the mascots existed when this alleged multiple birth took place.

Paul|6.4.07 @ 7:38PM|#

China's one child policy will end in the next decade. I just wanted to be the first to get the prediction out there.

Chucklehead|6.5.07 @ 10:12AM|#

From the article:

"One woman says her parents-in-law put the drugs into her food to make sure she would conceive twins."

And the article doesn't say whether the woman who produced the quints took the drugs voluntarily either. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find out she was coerced into taking them.

I also wonder, as more stories like this get out, if the government's forced-sterilization program will be expanded.

Yeah, happy times.