Mr. Obama--Ask Hu Jintao About This

At a press conference happening about the time of the arrival of the chief oligarch of China, an escapee and survivor of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre called for President Obama to enter a serious discussion with the Chinese President about human rights. Chai Ling is particularly concerned with China's "one child" policy and forced abortions.

Ling arrived in the United States the year after the massacre, and founded an organization called "All Girls Allowed." As far as the Chinese tyrants are concerned, Ling is a bad person on three counts--she is a female, she speaks out on China's mass child-murder policy, and she is Christian. The forced abortion issue has a double-edge, since it also allows the good old-fashioned Chinese custom of aborting female children. That part is unofficial, but if you want a boy, and you're only allowed one child, keep murdering the girls until you get a boy.

She asks Obama rhetorically what she will never be allowed to ask him directly, face to face: "President Obama, just imagine, what would you do if among your two beautiful girls, if none of them would be allowed to live because, and only because, they are girls." The grammar may not be perfect, but the question is both fair and horrifying. She goes on: "As we gather here in Washington, over 35,000 forced and coerced abortions are taking place today in China; every 2.5 seconds a precious baby's life is taken; among every six baby girls, one will never be born simply because she is a girl; 500 women will commit suicide, at five times the world average rate; 3,000 baby girls are abandoned on street corners; and more than 200 children and women are trafficked into slavery."

Her question is both heart-rending, and at the same time addresses the kind of monster that Obama is holding hands with at the White House. It also raises the question of why America's radical feminists are so silent about Islamic repression of women and China's policy of forcing women to undergo abortions. A spokesman for Women's Rights Without Frontiers described the gruesome policy: "When I say forced abortion, I mean women are literally dragged out of their homes and off the streets. They can be jailed in family planning jails (NARAL and Planned Parenthood are salivating at this), forced to abort children that they want and this can happen all the way up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Some of these forced abortions are so violent that the women themselves die along with their full-term babies."

I hope that our child-loving, human rights-advocating, equal rights for all President gives this some thought while asking Hu Jintao to pass the soy sauce.