China Now Allows Three Children Per Couple

The disastrous results of the one-child policy, which demographers had long anticipated, are becoming more evident every day: millions of adult Chinese are aging without help, and millions of young men cannot find wives because the cultural preference for boys has led to millions of selective abortions of girls.

On Friday August 20, 2021, the National People's Congress of the Communist Party of China passed a new law allowing families to have up to three children, the BBC reports.

Leaders hope this change will encourage families to have more children, especially as the move to a two-child policy in 2015 appears to have failed to achieve that goal.

With the new limit set at three children, the government repealed its “social maintenance fee,” the fine that was imposed for having more children than the limit allowed by law. It also passed resolutions “encouraging local governments to offer parental leave: by increasing women's employment rights and improving childcare facilities,” the same source reports.

China instituted its one-child policy in 1980 to control its population. This has led to numerous forced abortions and sterilizations, as well as severe fines of up to 10 times the family's annual income, and job losses for parents who break the law. The “illegal” children who survived were either hidden or ostracized from society.

The authorization to have two children five years ago has not stopped forced abortions. “In 2017, Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, told LifeNews.com that single women and women bearing third children were still being forced to abort their unborn babies.”

“A recent Associated Press report exposed even more abuses, including police raids on families’ homes in search of illegal children, families going into hiding to protect their children, government intimidation and more.” These abuses will probably not end with the three-child policy.

About 13 million unborn babies are aborted in China each year, but that official figure is only the tip of the iceberg.

Based on data from the 2020 census, researchers estimate that around 30 million men in China cannot find wives because of the selective abortion of girls.