China's One-Child Mothers

In the fall of 1983 when my mother was 29, she received news from her superiors at her shoe factory in Yun, a county in Henan Province, that every female worker who had already had one child would be required to undergo sterilization. The Chinese Communist Party had introduced the one-child policy a few years earlier in 1979, but this was the first time my mother had heard about the policy. And it was the first time it was implemented in her hometown.

"China's One-Child Mothers" is from foreignaffairs.com, published on May 10, 2016.

©2016 Foreign Affairs (P)2016 Audible, Inc.