The Shaanxi provincial government said in a statement that a preliminary probe had confirmed the case was "basically true", and the investigators have recommended action be taken against the perpetrators. "Such practice has seriously violated the relevant policies set by national and provincial family planning commissions, which harmed the image of our family planning work, and caused extremely poor effects in society," said the statement. Chinese web users have reacted in anger to the abortion, with one comparing it to acts perpetrated by "Japanese devils and Nazis", after photos online showed Feng lying on a hospital bed next to the blood-smeared body of her baby. China has implemented its draconian family planning policy since the late 1970s in an effort to control a population that has grown to 1.3 billion people, the world's largest. Ms Feng was forced into the abortion as she could not pay the fine for having a second child, US-based activists said. Rights groups say that as a result of the policy, thousands of women have been forced by authorities to terminate their pregnancies. Blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who recently left China for the United States after fleeing house arrest, was once jailed after angering local officials for bringing to light hundreds of forced abortions.
– It's the kind of story you fervently hope is an Internet hoax: a picture of a bloody fetus next to a woman in a hospital bed makes the rounds online, supposedly offering proof that China forced her to have an abortion in her seventh month of pregnancy. But as the AFP reports, it's "basically true," or so admitted China today. Rights groups say Feng Jianmei, a woman in the northern Shaanxi province, was forced to end her pregnancy after she didn't pay a sizable fine for planning to have a second child. The BBC reports that the US-based All Girls Allowed spoke to Feng's husband, who told them she was forced to go to the hospital, and restrained once there. "This is a serious violation of the National Population and Family Planning Commission's policies, jeopardizes the population control work, and has caused uneasiness in society," the provincial government said in an online statement. It recommended that those behind the abortion, who have not been identified, be punished. Late-term abortions have been banned in China since 2001.