Perhaps the most famous example in recent history of state control over reproduction is China’s one-child policy, and this was a key source of information for my book.
Introduced in 1979, it lasted until 2011, when the law changed, increasing the number of children allowed from one child to two: but only for those parents who were both an only child. In 2015 all married couples were allowed two children.

The policy stated that “both husband and wife have the duty to practice family planning” and that “the state promotes family planning so that population growth may fit the plans for economic and social development.”

If parents had a second child they could suffer heavy fines, have their house taken away, lose their job, be put in prison and suffer forced sterilisation. Their ‘excess’ children could also be removed, for ‘social adjustment’ reasons.

During this period, according to China’s Health Ministry’s estimates, over half a billion birth control procedures were
carried out.
These included over 336 million abortions and 196 million sterilisations (both men and women). Many of these were forced.
The policy also generated two trillion yuan (£206bn) in fines.

The Chinese government claims the policy was a success, preventing 400 million births and thereby avoiding the prospect of starvation for many families:

“the one-child policy has made the country more powerful, the people more prosperous, and the world more peaceful.” 

A generation was taught to obey this law, not to question it. To believe they were doing the right thing for their country, and any contravention would bring them shame.

The propaganda was pervasive to reinforce these laws with messaging all over the country on posters, cartoons, songs, plays, textbooks, playing cards, even matches.
Many slogans were introduced, including the ubiquitous motto:
‘For every couple one child’.

Threatening adverts warned of the consequences of breaking this law:
‘The first child gets born, with the second we tie your tubes, with the third and fourth we abort, abort, abort.’

‘If you have children illegally, we will legally demolish your house’.

In China, the bloodline passes down through the male side, resulting in a cultural preference for boys. As gender testing via ultrasound was prohibited, baby girls were frequently abandoned in the street.

It is estimated that over this period, 20 million babies, the majority girls, went missing.

Dubbed ‘the invisible generation’ these ‘excess’ children had no legal birth permit and no status. They were not entitled to school or healthcare. They had to operate under the radar, excluded from society with a heavy burden of shame: they had broken the law simply by being born.

Some excess babies were parcelled out to relatives to keep them hidden, often in rural locations, others were abandoned to worse fates.

Many were considered a burden to their families, and grew up in secrecy, on the run from the authorities. Punished for a crime not of their making.

Trafficking and infanticide were major problems. ‘Baby hatches’ were set up in urban centres in an attempt to address the issue of abandonment. Babies could be dropped off at kiosks anonymously by parents, and then the authorities would take them to secretive state-run orphanages.

Conditions in some of these state-run facilities were appalling. It was from these places of supposed safety that thousands of babies were given fake histories and sent abroad to be adopted by international families.
Some claim the government deliberately set out to make money by trafficking excess babies from orphanages or directly from families on adoption programmes.

Thankfully, this practice stopped with the change in the one-child policy, however China’s birth control laws are still in place today.
And once again, economic reasons are driving continued intervention by the state.

Worried about the impact on the economy of its declining birth rate and ageing population, in 2021 the Chinese government changed the law again to increase the number of children to three, and introduced financial incentives to encourage families to have more children.

Most families have not responded. Having children in China is costly: childcare is expensive. So there has been another more sinister change. China’s National Health Commission recently announced it wants to reduce the number of abortions for ‘non-medical reasons’, thereby denying women access to safe birth control.
It seems China won’t be ceasing intervention in women’s reproductive rights any time soon.