Thank Deng Xiaoping for Little Girls

In an article, The Enlightened Despotism of Chinese-Style Family Planning, at Reason Magazine, Jacob Sullum explores  the Chinese Human Rights Defenders report on the 30th anniversary of the one-child policy, "which lays bare the brutal reality of the violently oppressive policy so glibly supported by rich Westerners who take their own reproductive freedom for granted."

Sullum also links to his 2007 article,  Thank Deng Xiaoping for Little Girls, where he explored the relationship between the one-child policy and international adoption:

As I gradually realized, the truth about Chinese adoption is more complicated than the conventional story about Westerners who magnanimously take in China’s unwanted girls. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say these girls are “unwanted” only because the Chinese government has made them so. Although the government’s oppressive, family-destroying policies have had the incidental benefit of bringing joy to the lives of adoptive parents in the U.S. and elsewhere, it will be a great victory for liberty when such heartwarming stories stop appearing on newsstands and bookshelves. These adoptions would not be occurring if the Chinese government did not try to dictate the most basic and intimate of life’s decisions.

Amen.