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

Part 6

IF THE GOVERNMENT WANTS to demonstrate it is truly distressed about its part in destroying the life of a baby, and in some sense the life of the baby's mother, it should move to ensure this never happens again. This could be achieved by following the lead of the United States, which allows asylum claims under the "political opinion" category of the Refugee Convention. Dissent from the one-child policy is considered by PRC authorities as a political act. To defy the birth plan is an act of treachery, a crime against the State.

If China views such defiance as political, we should also, and grant asylum on that basis.

Some argue this would "open the floodgates", that any favourable treatment towards women in this diabolical predicament would, in the words of Alan Jones, be noticed by "every woman of child-bearing age in China" and "six hundred million Chinese women will presumably be able to make a similar claim. Let's get on the next boat, they'll say…" (The Today Show, 13 September 1996).

But we should not deny asylum to anyone on the basis that it may mean more applications. Each case needs to be determined on its merits. If you don't draw the line somewhere, aren't you advocating simply just opening the doors to anyone who escapes on a boat? was a question posed to US Congressman Chris Smith on ABC Radio's AM program early in 1995. "Well," he answered, "the saddest thing is that there are very few women who escape the tyranny of the Chinese Government."

The time is overdue for a more humane response to the few who do.

To: Perspectives Issue 64

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.