Human rights must be the priority

In President Obama's meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao this week, should discussion of human rights and religious freedom be on par with economic and environmental issues, or should human rights and religious freedom be secondary matters?

In President Obama's meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao this week, should discussion of human rights and religious freedom be on par with economic and environmental issues, or should human rights and religious freedom be secondary matters?

Obama and Hu Jintao cannot discuss the important issues of economic and environmental policies in any meaningful way without first addressing the enormous elephant in the room. That bloated, trumpeting beast is the brutal inhumanity of China's one child policy.

The Chinese government abuses its power and bullies its citizens in myriad ways, but nothing laughs in the face of human rights quite so loudly and obnoxiously as the Chinese policy that coerces women to mutilate their reproductive organs against their will and forces parents to destroy their unborn children.

It's hard to stomach stories like the one where one Chinese couple shares that they were held against their will and forced to abort an 8-month pregnancy, but we need to. We need to hear them. We need to share them. And when our president has an opportunity to meet with the man who has power to restore basic human rights to Chinese citizens, he has an obligation to address stories like these.

I am astonished that we even have to say it, but it appears that we do: Kidnapping pregnant women and forcibly injecting their pregnant wombs with poison for the "crime" of having a second child is barbaric, inhuman behavior.

China's one child policy is not an internal affair that we can politely ignore while discussing issues that, comparatively speaking, are the moral equivalent of the weather. Even if we are not Chinese, we are human beings. This is everybody's business.

Though Obama does not exactly have a spotless record when it comes to defending the human right to life, I have confidence that even he can recognize the atrocity of China's one child policy. I hope and pray that he addresses its cruel inhumanity and takes advantage of this opportunity to lead the global community toward greater respect for all human life.

By Danielle Bean  |  January 21, 2010; 7:45 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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