Global Concern Triggers Positive Turn in Case of Five-Month Pregnant Cao Ruyi Who Was Threatened with Forced Abortion

VOA photo shows Ms. Cao in her hospital bed.

CHANGSHA, HUNAN, China, June 10, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- Due to the global outcry triggered by ChinaAid's exposure of the attempted forced abortion of a woman's five-month-old unborn baby in Changsha, Hunan province, the pregnant woman Cao Ruyi was allowed to return home on Sunday.

 

Cao's husband Li Fu told ChinaAid founder and president Bob Fu that the surveillance personnel from the local family planning office had also been called off. On behalf of his wife and their unborn first child, he expressed their thanks to ChinaAid for exposing the violent manner in which the local family planning officials dragged his wife to the hospital and the threat of performing a forced abortion on her. He said the domestic and international attention and concern that Fu's publicity efforts elicited was the reason Ms. Cao was allowed to return home.

 

See ChinaAid's earlier reports on this case at:www.chinaaid.org/2012/06/caa-update-on-mrs-cao-threatened.html and www.chinaaid.org/2012/06/caa-woman-five-months-pregnant-facing.html  

 

However, before her release from the hospital, Ms. Cao was forced to sign a guarantee that she will pay a 10,000 yuan (nearly US$1500) "pregnancy termination deposit fee," which will not be returned if she insists on keeping her baby. Instead the deposit will serve as partial payment of her fine for giving birth to a baby without government permission. She will also be required to pay a "social burden compensation fee" of US$25,000.

 

Nonetheless, this is a welcome change. ChinaAid expresses its thanks for the timely prayers of many brothers and sisters and for the concern expressed by many in the international community, most notably U.S. congressman Chris Smith who contacted the Hunan provincial and Changsha municipal governments directly. Some Chinese netizens have also traveled to Changsha to lodge a formal protest with the procuratorate about Ms. Cao's illegal detention by local officials. Many house church Christians prayed for Ms. Cao's unborn child and called the couple to encourage and express support for them

 

ChinaAid calls on the residents of the three U.S. cities that have established sister-city relationships with Changsha to call their mayors and local representatives and urge them to pay attention to this case. Changsha's sister cities in the United States are: St. Paul, Minnesota; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Annapolis, Maryland.