.png)
Chinese authorities apologise to woman forced to abort
City officials in China apologise to woman who was forced to have an abortion and three officials are suspended after photos posted online caused uproar.
China has promoted the one child policy since the 1970's to keep the population under control
China has apologised to a woman who was forced to undergo an abortion seven months into her pregnancy and suspended three officials responsible for the act, state media reported.
Xinhua News Agency said on Friday that two top local family planning officials and the head of the township government would be relieved of their duties.
This came after photos showing a foetus and the mother, Feng Jianmei, shocked web users.
She was made to undergo the procedure in Shaanxi province in the seventh month of pregnancy, local officials said after investigating.
Chinese law clearly prohibits abortions beyond six months.
The Ankang city government said it decided to suspend three officials in Zhenping county following initial investigations. It also urged the county government to conduct a thorough review of its family planning operations, said Xinhua news.
On Thursday night, the city officials apologised to Feng, 27, and her family, the report said.
She was ''forced to terminate her pregnancy'' at a hospital in Zhenping on 2 June, said Xinhua.
Officials in Zhenping county claimed she agreed to the abortion because she was not allowed to have a second child by law. She already has a daughter, born in 2007.
But activists said she was forced into the abortion as she could not pay the fine for having a second child.
China has implemented its family planning policy since the late 1970s in an effort to control a population that has grown to 1.3 billion people, the world's largest.
Under the policy, urban families are generally allowed to have one child, while rural families can give birth to two children if the first is a girl.
They have to pay a fine if they contravene the rules.
Rights groups says that as a result of the policy, thousands of women have been forced by authorities to terminate their pregnancies.
Blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who recently left China for the United States after fleeing house arrest, was once jailed after angering local officials for bringing to light hundreds of forced abortions.
Official statistics show that since the start of the policy, the number of abortions peaked in 1983, with a total of 14.37 million terminations that year.
