Launched in the 1970s, the one-child law initiated a systematic program of forced abortion, forced sterilization, privacy invasion, and a seriously imbalanced sex ratio because parents abort girls in order to have a preferred male heir.
By May 26, Chinese authorities were putting the official death toll from the devastating earthquake at 65,000, with many thousands still missing. Many of the dead and missing are children, buried in the more than 7,000 classrooms reportedly destroyed by the quake.
