Commentary in the West was largely silent or else vaguely supportive when China recently announced it was changing its deacdes-old “one-child policy” to a “two-child policy”. Allow me to be the exception. Whether the policy is one or two children is irrelevant. The fact that the Chinese state arrogates to itself the power to dictate such decisions to their citizens is quite unjustified for any rational policy reason (including “population control”) and is the pretext for an oppressive police state enforcement mechanism that has resulted in well-documented cases of the kidnapping of pregnant women and the forcible aborting of their unborn babies. It is repugnant and we in the West should not abet it with our silence.
Read the argument in my latest column for the Ottawa Citizen.
