Face of Abortion in China: Young and Unmarried
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: May 13, 2007

QINGDAO, China — At an abortion clinic in this seaside city, a young woman sat in the recovery room with an IV drip in one hand and a cellphone in the other. She was 22 and worked as a nurse. Her boyfriend, an information technology specialist, sat nearby. They both knew the routine: It was her second abortion in 18 months.

In the waiting room, a few other unmarried couples watched a DVD of a hit Chinese movie until they were called. The clinic, one of the few in China that focuses on reproductive health for single women, performed 65 abortions in March. Of those women, 42 were having at least their second abortion. One woman had her sixth.

Young and single is not the usual profile of a woman having an abortion in China. Far more often, abortion has been associated with married women complying, voluntarily or not, with the country’s one-child policy. But as society has rapidly changed, so has the face of abortion.
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