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Abstract
This study uses mixed methods to investigate the effects of the state's abortion policy on induced abortion among married women in China. I employ both quantitative analysis of data from the 1988 and 2006 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Surveys and thematic analysis qualitative data from 140 in-depth interviews. Results show that the more stringent the abortion policy, the more likely married women are to have an induced abortion. Women become less vulnerable to enforced induced abortion during a loosened policy period. It is suggested that the implementation of a financial penalty in the form of the Social Maintenance Fee (She-Hui Fu-Yang Fei) and the discontinuation of using abortion rates for administrative evaluations are likely to contribute to this process.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the valuable comments, suggestions, and corrections on earlier drafts from Tim F. Liao (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Shige Song (City University of New York–Queens College), Min Li (University of Florida), and Yudong Zhang (University of Chicago).
Notes
The social maintenance fee is an administrative charge imposed on citizens who give birth to babies not in compliance with the provisions that compensate for the insufficient public funds for social causes. It aims to impose a necessary economic restriction on such citizens, to coordinate the sound use of natural resources and protect the environment. Hence, it is characterized by compensation and imposition.
Induced abortions per 1,000 women ages 15–49. The induced abortion rate excludes therapeutic abortions, which are usually performed for the sake of maternal health.
The Program of Action (“Cairo Program”) of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) offered solutions to population-related social problems, and set limits on state population policies through its recognition of informed choice. As a member state in the ICPD, China pledged to initiate the informed choice policy. This meant that its population policies would empower women's reproductive health rights by offering women access to voluntary decision making on fertility, contraception, and childbearing.
The Population and Family Planning Law 2001. Retrieved December 12, 2015 (http://www.nhfpc.gov.cn/jtfzs/s7871/201307/fc35ec8425544c628a572e5b50815beb.shtml).
The data used in this research are from the published secondary statistics. There is no information in the data sources that can be used to identify respondents, and human subject protection is not an issue here. Furthermore, as a state organization, the Chinese National Family Planning Commission has an Institutional Review Board to approve data collection related to human subjects. The above disclaimers also apply to the data from the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Surveys in China (NFPRHS) used in this study (National Population and Family Planning Commission of P.R. China, and China Population and Development Research Centre Citation2013; Wang Citation2012b). While the 2006 survey may underrepresent unmarried women (Guo Citation2008), our analysis is done on married women. In addition, this dataset has been widely used by many studies (see, e.g., Wang Citation2008; Zhang 2008; Qin and Li Citation2009; Wu and Duan Citation2009; Yang Citation2011; Wang Citation2014a, Citation2014b; National Population and Reproductive Health Science Data Center Citation2016).
This data could possibly include a small quantity of voluntary abortions, both in the tightened and loosened policy periods. However, I would like to argue that voluntary abortions are still influenced by abortion policy to some extent since the birth quota was limited. Under the tightened policy, women had no other choice but to undergo enforced induced abortions if they had unauthorized pregnancies. Due to the limited birth quota, some women with strong son preferences may voluntarily chose to have induced abortion if they did not already have a son, and the type-B ultrasound showed that the fetus was a female. Under the loosened policy, although to pay the fines was an option for those who could afford it, women without economic capacity may also choose voluntary abortion due to the limited birth quota. Such a mechanism was specific to China's context.
In this study, theoretical sampling was guided by behavior selection theory, focusing on the effect of policy on abortion behavior.
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Cuntong Wang
Cuntong Wang received his PhD in demography from Peking University in 2009. He is now a professor in the School of Social Development at Central University of Finance and Economics, and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests include social science methodology, medical sociology, and health inequality.