Chinese Female Orphans

Everyday in China, newborn babies and children are tossed out on the streets or killed by their own mothers. Almost all of these unwanted babies and children are females. China's population is the highest over one billion. Because of this, the government has formed a law called the One-Child-Per-Family Policy. If China's population, already at 1.2 billion, is allowed to grow, the result will be economic collapse, environmental ruin, and famine. Given the government's policy of one child per couple, rural parents often dispose the female babies and try again for a boy. China's government implemented these strict family planning controls in the 1970s.

China's birth rates have dropped and officials estimate that without the family planning campaign, the Chinese population would now be more than 1.5 billion. Every year, 21 million children are born. Sometimes just days before the baby is due, there are reports of enforced sterilization and of hospitals fatally injecting second babies shortly after their birth. Infant girls who survive this sex selection, female infanticide and abandonment, now face a further risk: they may be left to die of hunger and thirst in the very institutions where they are taken in. If a female baby is unwanted, she is abandoned, suffocated, or drowned soon after their birth. In China boys are valued as extra hands that will support their parents in their old age. Girls, who by custom move in with their in-laws after marriage, are viewed as damaged goods.