The first time I became pregnant, I was 18 years old, a sophomore at Peking University. I was
terrified and deeply ashamed. All I could think was a scene I saw a young couple when I first arrived
Peking University, was being expelled in front of us freshman for she was found out in love and
pregnant. The thought of being kicked out of school, which represented life, future, jobs, and a
position in society, was unthinkable.
My father, who was an army doctor himself, took me in secret to the neighboring city’s clinic to end
the pregnancy. The surgery was performed on a cold operating table, with no anesthesia. It was
extremely painful. We both took the bus back home without saying a word to each other. We never
talked about this abortion or my second coerced abortion again for over two decades until a few
days ago when he read this story in my book. In my book I tell at length how my forced abortion
experience was a combination of the law requiring an abortion if you are not married and the
pressure of the society, giving young women no choice.
The third time I was pregnant I was in graduate school, with my-soon-to-be-husband. But even if
you are married you must abort unless you have a birth permit, and you cannot get married until
you have a combined age of 48. This time I walked in with him to a clinic in Beijing, without help
nor informing any of our parents. Only after that, we realized we could have tried to fake our age to
and get a marriage certificate. We regret why we did not think of that earlier. We did get married
shortly after. But the baby was gone. That is the way it works in China.

Similarly in my life, I now see how it was all threaded together. Started by Deng Xiaoping who
decided to order the One-Child Policy, in addition to all these forced abortions, the policy led to the
universities to expel young couples who were in love and pregnant, that led to my father and my
boyfriend’s father taking me to end my pregnancies. And that led to the third time when I was
pregnant, I knew where to go and what to do. It did not stop here, worst yet, by the fourth time,
when I was pregnant, I was already escaped to Paris in 1990, the land of freedom. Alone and in a
very bad place in my marriage, with advice from a Chinese couple who loved very much their own
child, I did what I was taught to do: ended that pregnancy too.