{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=397631", "Smith keynote at Heritage Foundation Event on Chinas One-Child Policy", "2014-10-09", "2014", "2014-10", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), co-chairman of the U.S. Commission on China, (CECC) and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs global human rights subcommittee, called China\u2019s one child policy announced in 1979 state sponsored violence against women and children\u2014including and especially girls\u2014and constitutes massive crimes against humanity. He made the remarks today as a keynote speaker at a Heritage Foundation event on the Chinese government\u2019s brutal implementation of the policy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe Nuremberg Nazi war crimes tribunal properly construed forced abortion as a crime against humanity\u2014nothing in human history compares to the magnitude of China\u2019s more than 34-year assault on women and children,\u201d said Smith, who has held almost 50 hearings on human rights violations in China. \u201cAbortion is a weapon of mass destruction. Hundreds of millions of lives have been exterminated.\u201d Click here to read Smith\u2019s speech. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Held to mark the International Day of the Girl Child on Oct. 11, the event was entitled \u201cChina\u2019s One Child Policy: A Discussion on Valuing Women and Girls in the 21st Century.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cToday in China, rather than being given maternal care, pregnant women without birth allowed permits are hunted down and forcibly aborted. They are mocked, belittled, humiliated and exploited. A mother has absolutely no right or legal standing to protect her unborn baby or herself from state sponsored violence,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are no single moms in China\u2014except those who somehow evade the family planning cadres and conceal their pregnancy.\u00a0 Beijing\u2019s One Child Policy bans single moms from obtaining government permission to carry the child to term. For more than three decades, most brothers and sisters have been illegal.\u201d  \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0According to a report released in 2012 by the Chinese Center for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC), there were a staggering 590 female suicidesper day in China, the only country in the world where the female suicide rate is higher than the male. The Beijing Psychological Crisis Study and Prevention Center determined that in China the suicide rate for females is over three times higher than for males. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe result of this policy is a nightmarish \u2018brave new world\u2019 with no precedent in human history, where women are psychologically wounded, the girl child the victim of sex-selective abortion, and most children grow up without brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles or cousins,\u201d Smith said. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Four of Smith\u2019s hearings focused on Chen Guangcheng\u2014the blind, self-taught lawyer who defended women from the one child policy, but paid a heavy price for his work, including jail, beatings and torture. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cGuangcheng testified once in person and twice by phone from his confinement in a Chinese hospital after his heroic escape,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI know of no other person on Earth who has personally suffered so much for attempting to stop this cruelty to women. He is a hero.\u201d  \n  \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Smith noted that in 2000, he wrote a law, The Admiral James W. Nance and Meg Donovan Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal years 2000 and 2001, which bars foreign nationals complicit with forced sterilizations and forced abortions from obtaining U.S. visas. \n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSection 801 of Title VIII of that Act requires the Secretary of State not to issue any visa to, and the Attorney General not to admit to the United States, any foreign national whom the Secretary finds, based on credible and specific information, to have been directly involved in the establishment or enforcement of forced abortion or forced sterilization,\u201d Smith said. \u201cOwing to a glaring lack of implementation only a handful of abusers have been denied visas to the United States.\u201d \n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Smith also noted China is ground zero in Asia for human trafficking, a main point of the CECC\u2019s 2014 report on human rights in China released today. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Smith said that China should have not been taken off Tier 3 by the State Department\u2019s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report released earlier this year. The human trafficking problem in China is linked to severe gender imbalances and challenging conditions in bordering countries that lead to trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced marriage.  \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Smith is the author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the comprehensive landmark law to prevent trafficking, prosecute traffickers and protect victims from modern day slavery. One provision of the law requires an annual assessment of every country, the TIP report. Last year the TIP Report stated: \u201cChina\u2019s birth limitation policy, coupled with a cultural preference for sons, creates a skewed sex ratio in China, which served as a key cause of trafficking of foreign women as brides for Chinese men and for forced prostitution.\u201d  \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI respectfully submit that not only is the Obama Administration turning a blind eye to the atrocities being committed under the one child policy, but it is even contributing financial support\u2014contrary to U.S. law\u2014to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). \u201cThirty years ago\u2014on May 9, 1984\u2014I\u00a0authored the first amendment ever\u00a0to\u00a0a foreign aid bill to deny funding to organizations such as the UNFPA\u00a0that are complicit with China's forced abortion and involuntary sterilization policies,\u201d Smith said. \u201cFor over three decades, the UNFPA has consistently heaped praise on China\u2019s population control program and repeatedly urged other countries to embrace similar policies.\u201d\n \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=397631"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6838040426373482, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}