The historic Supreme Court Dobbs ruling striking down Roe v. Wade caught notice in China as it reverberated around the world.
A Chinese-language hashtag pointing to the Dobbs decision swiftly became the largest trending topic on social media in China, a report from the Wall Street Journal said, getting 45 million views within two hours on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform.
China is "signaling intent to reduce high numbers of abortion as it confronts a decline in births," the report said.
China had a one-child policy from 1980 until 2016. It then changed to a two-child policy, and last year China “relaxed its family planning policy” to “allow” couples to have three children.
The policy had enforced through forced abortion through those decades, and it's not known exactly how many millions have been aborted due to the child-limiting policies, though estimates are as high as 400 million.
Pro-life advocates did not celebrate the three-child policy, since the Chinese government would continue to track births and coerce women to have abortion if they exceed the approved number of children, advocates say, a violation of human rights.
China is also accused of forced sterilization of Uygur women, the Uygurs a mostly Muslim Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Xinjiang area of Northwest China.
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China's population control efforts have significantly affected the country's demographics.
Male children had often been preferred and during the time of the policies it became more undesirable to have female babies. This drove an increase in sex-selective abortion of females, once sex determination through ultrasound became available, more girls placed in orphanages or abandoned, as well as infanticide of girls. Data from China’s 2020 census showed there were 34.9 million more men than women in China. The census also showed fewer people marrying, many women putting off having children or forgoing parenthood altogether, and a slowing population growth rate.
Abortion and contraception are readily available in China, the Wall Street Journal report said. It is one of a handful of countries to allow elective abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Official Chinese government figures state that just under 9 million abortions were conducted in China in 2020, largely considered the highest number for a single nation.
A 2022 report from Guttmacher Institute, the World Health Organization, and the United Nation's, had China's abortion rates at 49 per 1,000 reproductive-aged women annually. The report described that figure as high globally but lower than some Asian countries such as Vietnam. The stats for North America and Europe was closer to 17.
Earlier this year it was reported that China was undertaking a “campaign of intervention” because of its dramatically reduced birthrate.
China's economy has been negatively impacted as well.
"As a rapid decline in births coupled with an aging population present economic and other challenges to the world’s most populous country, China’s policies making it simple to obtain an abortion are under reconsideration," the Wall Street Journal article said.
A recent Mercator report also highlighted that the Chinese government has acknowledged it has a population crisis on its hands.
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A report last year from NPR detailed how China's one-child policy "continued to haunt families" with continued psychological fallout.
The full scope of how China will address it's demographic decline and abortion issues remains to be seen, but given the country's history in this area it is certain that the world will be watching.
