A Crisis of Compassion
by Melinda Tankard Reist
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 64
Winter 1999

Part 2

THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN the end of it, had not Zhu dramatically re-emerged in the public conscience at a Senate committee hearing in May with a video taped interview, as well as a written order by family planning authorities to security officers to apprehend the woman on arrival, a medical certificate ("On 21 July 1997 the second pregnancy eight months plus has been induced to be terminated in our hospital") and the bill for the abortion-all were smuggled out of China.

"It offends my own instincts and the instincts of millions of Australians", the Prime Minister John Howard said of the near-birth abortion, later adding: "Most Australians would consider it murder." The Catholic Bishops described the near-birth abortion as an atrocity, "offend[ing] every principle known to God and man" and condemned the Australian Government as having "blood on its hands". (For its part, China's state family planning commission said the woman chose to have a late abortion because her boyfriend had deserted her and she could not afford to have a second child.)
If the video tape didn't cause enough of a stir, a 60 Minutes team tracked Ms Zhu down and compiled a harrowing piece about her experience (aired 6 June 1999). She wept inconsolably as she spoke of the death of her almost-born son:

They forced me into a car and took me to the hospital. I told the doctors I am already more than eight months pregnant. I was begging them to wait for my husband to come and help me but they said no and they gave me the injection anyway and I went into labour. After the baby was born I couldn't get out of bed. I asked the nurse what sex the baby was and she said he was a boy. A baby boy. The boy weighed three and a half kilos. When I heard this I just burst out crying and I cried so hard I actually passed out.

Concerned for her wellbeing, the journalists took her to the Australian consulate in Guangzhou, seeking protection for her and her three-year-old daughter Joycie.

Efforts by refugee advocates and Senator Brian Harradine to secure Ms Zhu a visa by which she could leave China (and perhaps by which Australia could make amends) failed. Attempts to bring her here for the purpose of giving evidence to the two inquiries now under way (after all, she is Exhibit A, the key witness) continue to meet resistance.

Australian Government officials say they have secured "guarantees" for the women's safety and the payment of fines. None are in writing and Amnesty International, among others, has asked questions about how Australian diplomats will monitor Chinese assurances about Ms Zhu and her daughter. Their welfare depends on the same authorities Ms Zhu accused of persecution. So fearful was she of being forced to leave the consulate's protection, she tried to harm herself, according to Susan Engwerda, who cared for her for almost two weeks. She recounted to ABC's Radio's PM (16 June 1999) that:

She was in such despair she was crying out and she was begging me because her daughter was Australian born she felt that if she was dead that I could somehow take her child back to Australia and she was willing to give up her life so that her daughter could live...she was just howling with grief because she knew that I had to leave and she was terrified and she had got a razor blade out of one of the safety razors and I confiscated that . . . she was crying out. She was begging me, please Susan take Joycie, take Joycie. And it was the most heart wrenching thing I've ever been through ...

To: Part 3

Melinda Tankard Reist Melinda Tankard Reist is a freelance writer with a special interest in bioethics, medical abuses of women and human rights abuses in population programs. She advises Senator Brian Harradine on these issues. Her forthcoming book, Giving Sorrow Words: Women's Stories of Abortion Grief, will be published in March next year by Duffy and Snellgrove.