Unmarried Chinese mothers to be fined
Plans to fine women who have children out of wedlock have caused outrage in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Micro-bloggers and academics joined forces to condemn Wuhan's plans to punish single mothers Photo: ALAMY
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
9:14AM BST 03 Jun 2013
On Monday, state media reported that under draft legislation being considered by the city's government unmarried mothers and women who had children with men who were already married would be charged hefty "social compensation fees".
The plans, drawn up by family planning officials in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, are designed to target women who "knowingly have children out of wedlock", according to a report in the Global Times newspaper.
State media said the aim of the legislation was to "intensify family planning management and keep the birth rate at a low level." The unveiling of the draft legislation came just days after China was appalled by the case of Baby 59, a newborn baby boy who was miraculously rescued from a sewage pipe in Zhejiang province.
Reports suggested the baby's mother had been forced into secretly delivering the baby in a communal lavatory as a result of the social stigma attached to being a single mother. The mother, who was not named, told police she had been rejected by the child's biological father, leading her to attempt to hide her pregnancy.
Micro-bloggers and academics joined forces to condemn Wuhan's plans to punish single mothers.
He Yafu, a Chinese demographer, told the Global Times the policy would almost certainly lead to a rise in the number of abandoned babies and abortions. Family planning officials should not be able to "regulate [moral] behaviour," he added.
"The regulation is ridiculous," Wang Qiong, a professor at Wuhan University, told the China Daily.
"What if a woman chooses to have a test tube baby without getting married? Should she also be fined?"
One user of China's Twitter-like microblog Weibo, said: "Single mothers are already subjected to social discrimination and now they are thinking of fining them.
"They have lost their minds [and are just] trying to make more money."
