Why the baby kidnapper shouldn’t die
by Anne Roback Morse
An obstetrician in the Shaanxi province of China was sentenced to death for child trafficking this week. The 55 year old woman repeatedly told her patients that their new born infant was either deformed or sick. She persuaded the new parents to give up their children for adoption. Instead of adoption, however, the infants were sold to human traffickers for profit. Doctor Zhang Shuxia pleaded guilty to selling seven children, but she remains the prime suspect in over 20 cases of missing children in the province. Five other employees at the hospital were arrested as accomplices. This recent case of Doctor Shuxia is a result of the two great disasters caused by China’s birth control policy: the moral and the demographic.
The one-child policy provided both the demand and the supply for the Doctor Shuxia’s trafficked children. China’s restrictive birth policy fuels the demand for sons; healthy male children have become prized treasures and are sold to couples desperate for a male heir.[] Decades of sex-selective abortions mean females of reproductive age are now scarce. China’s human-trafficking industry is booming to supply both male heirs and female sex-slaves.
For Doctor Shuxia, China’s birth control policy also provided the supply of children. Dr. Shuxia told her patients that their newborns were sick or deformed. The parents then gave up their supposedly sick child to be able to try again so their only child would be a healthy one.[2]
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