SILENT SHOUTS

Voices that keep wishing, shouts that are only as sonorous as whispers. Although it’s a past event but the more I read or thought about it the more I saw and felt. The one child policy of china.

To think I was actually an admirer of the law. At a time I actually wished Nigeria would make talks about passing a similar bill. You still don’t know what am driving at? Okay. Let me fill you in a bit. I’m talking about 336 million forced abortions, 222 million sterilization, a fine of 3 to ten times the family’s income, etc.

The 1979 law that stipulates every couple may have just one child (or two for ethnic minorities and for rural couples whose first child is a girl). The law to the rich was easily evaded as they were required to pay a “social compensation fee”, but to the poor especially in the rural areas where families need extra hands as they cannot afford to buy labor  The family planning vigilantes are always at hand to carry out forced abortion on any woman who gets pregnant without permission and can’t pay the usually exorbitant fines.

Who suffered the most?  There are cases of couples who fled their villages to give birth in neighboring provinces, the brutal methods applied in performing the forced abortions, women forced by husbands to abort baby girls just so that their only child will be a boy. The silent shouts of the mothers are starting to get louder, not very loud yet but a little more sonorous. Women’s right organisations are beginning to wade in.
does the means justify the ends? In a spite to reduce the country’s overbearing population is the methodology plausible? Yes there is always going to be the dark side of a victory but do the means really justify the end?

The communist party argue that it does. Well I’m not writing about the political issues surrounding this but just to in my own little way join millions of women in the east and shout……..and soon that silent shout will be heard.