|
 The State Council said action would also be taken to avoid unwanted
pregnancies and to encourage men to "share responsibility" in
preventing them. Authorities aim to improve sex education and
strengthen post-abortion and post-childbirth family planning
services, the ruling body added.
"The basic national policy of gender equality and the principle of
giving priority to children need to be implemented in depth," said
Huang Xiaowei, deputy director of the State Council's National
Working Committee on Women and Children.
China has already enacted strict measures aimed at preventing
sex-selective abortions, which have been criticized for contributing
to gender inequality.
After years of trying to limit population growth, Beijing is
pledging policies aimed at encouraging larger families. It said in
June it would now allow all couples to have three children instead
of two, while policies designed to reduce the financial burden of
raising children are also being introduced.
[to top of second column] |
 It wasn't immediately clear
whether Monday's measures were designed to
address China's declining birth rate, which
think-tanks and policy researchers have
identified as one of its major social policy
challenges in the coming decades.
Although China remains the world's most populous nation, the latest
census showed population growth from 2011 to 2020 was the slowest
since the 1950s. The population is expected to start to decline
within a few years.
National Health Commission data showed that between 2014 and 2018,
there had been an average of 9.7 million abortions per year, rising
about 51% from the 2009-2013 average despite a relaxation of
family-planning policies in 2015 to allow each family to have two
children. The data didn't specify how many abortions were for
medical reasons.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and David Stanway; Editing by Simon
Cameron-Moore, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Pravin Char)
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