November 20, 2008
 
   
   
 
 
WASHINGTON (BP)--A woman who is six months pregnant will not undergo a forced abortion, despite being held for nearly a week in a Chinese hospital under threat of the procedure.
     
"We know that abortion threatens women's physical and mental health, and we further recognize that abortion always destroys the life of a child.... [W]e are relieved that this abortion did not take place."
-- Reps. Chris Smith & Joe Pitts
Arzigul Tursun, a mother of two, was released Nov. 18 from a hospital in Xinjiang, the vast northwest region of the world's most populous country, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). "I am all right and I am at home now," Tursun told RFA shortly after her release.
      The head of the local population control committee said Tursun "wasn't in good enough health to have an abortion."
      As a Uyghur Muslim, Tursun is permitted to have two children under China's coercive "one-child" program. Government officials, however, had decided to enforce the population-control policy on her third child. She is 26 weeks into her pregnancy.
      Tursun's deliverance from a coercive abortion came after two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the American ambassador to Beijing, urged Chinese officials to reverse course. Read More

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