What Revamped Child Policy Means for China's Church
China has announced it will end its "one child" policy, now allowing all married couples to have two children.
The decision changes a 35-year system that has been blamed for altering the gender balance, forcing women to have abortions and bringing about a rapidly aging workforce.
The Communist Party's ruling is considered one of the most significant in its efforts to ease population restrictions, which have gradually relaxed over the years.
"I have looked forward to this for so many years - even had dreams about it! I cried every time when I woke up and realized it wasn't yet true. I thought it was so unfair," said 36-year-old Su Weihua.
CBN News spoke with Christine De Vollmer, president of the Latin-American Alliance for the Family. Hear her share the history of China's "one child" policy and how the change will likely help the Christian Church grow. Watch below:
Su says she now has plans to get pregnant next year and that she is eager for her 8-year-old daughter to have a sibling.
"I do not care if the second child is a boy or a girl, at my age, as long as he or she is healthy," she said.
The party's Central Committee said in a statement that the decision was "to improve the balanced development of population" and to deal with an aging population. The official Xinhua News Agency said the proposal must be approved by the top legislature before it is enacted, which is essentially a formality. It gave no indication of when that would happen
The Associated Press reports that the U.S welcomes the policy change by China as a "positive step" but feels it does not go far enough.
"We also look forward to the day when birth limits are abandoned altogether," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, adding that the U.S. will keep working around the world to end coercive birth policies such as forced abortion and sterilization.
Some family experts believe that Christians will take full advantage of the new policy and see a population boom while others might hesitate to adapt to the new policy, conditioned by decades of the one-child norm and daunted by the cost of raising children.
Many Christian groups have long advocated for China to end its one-child policy, noting the many ways it encourages abortion and gendercide. There's concern that the new two-child policy will do little, if anything, to end such tragedies.
But Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, said the new policy "will not end any of the human rights abuses caused by the one-child policy, including forced abortion, involuntary sterilization or the sex-selective abortion of baby girls."
