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Jubilee Campaign Joins the Growing 'Coalition to End Gendercide' in China

Calls on the Chinese Ambassador in Washington to End the Chinese Government's Gendercide and Torture of Its Own Citizens Through Its One-Child Policy

Contact: Samuel B. Casey, 703-624-4092 cell, 202-587-5652

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2013 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today, at 2:30 p.m., human rights attorneys from the Jubilee Campaign will join Rep. Chris Smith and the other members of the Coalition Against Gendercide (the COALITION) to hold a press conference at the House Triangle announcing over a half a million petitions calling on India and China to end gendercide. A delegation will then deliver the petitions addressed to China to the Chinese Embassy. Media is encouraged to cover the press conference and follow the delegation to the Chinese Embassy.

More than 40 million abortions are performed worldwide each year. More than 85% of all abortions occur in developing countries. Many of these abortions target unborn baby girls, chosen for abortion solely because of their gender. Around the globe, women are missing in the millions -- aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100 million. As documented in the recent movie, IT'S A GIRL, debuted by the COALITION for Congress last night in the Congressional Visitors Center the toll is much higher now. This is due, in large part, to the fact that in China and northern India more than 120 boys are being born for every 100 girls.

However, these problems are becoming pervasive even in the developed world. Just this past week, a Canadian MP pushed parliament to denounce sex-selection abortions at a time when studies show women in many countries are using ultrasounds to determine the sex of unborn children for the purposes of sex-selection abortions. Additionally, earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a sex-selection abortion ban.

Abortion, and increasingly forced abortion, has become one of the most preeminent threats to human life and dignity because it directly attacks life itself, the most fundamental good and the condition for all others. Abortion, the deliberate killing of a human being before birth, is never morally acceptable, even in the name of furthering women's abilities to participate more fully in public life.

Samuel B. Casey, Managing Director & General Counsel of the JUBILEE CAMPAIGN said:

    "We encourage the international human rights community to remember, as most recently documented in the San Jose Articles, that there is no international human right to abortion and to be more gravely concerned that we are beginning to suffer the demographic consequences 0f not protecting the most basic of all human rights -- the right to life and human dignity as is protected by

    "Article 1 of the INTERNATIONAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, the Preamble and Article 6 of the INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS, and Article 3 of the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON BIOETHICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS. In assessing our obligation to protect human life, we must begin with a commitment never to intentionally kill, or collude in the killing, of any innocent human life, no matter how broken, unformed, disabled or desperate that life may seem."

Mr. Casey went on to say: "Whatever one's political position may be on voluntary abortion performed with fully informed consent, surely we can agree that forced abortion, sterilization and confiscatory fines to coerce such practices, like what is occurring in China today, ought to be condemned by the world community and stopped wherever it is now occurring." That is why Jubilee Campaign worked for and now applauds Section 34.B.aaa of the following "Agreed Statement" recently issued by the 57TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATION'S COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN following its global Conference on Eliminating Violence against Women and Girls, urging the global community to:

    "Condemn and take action to prevent violence against women and girls in health care settings, including sexual harassment, humiliation and forced medical procedures, or those conducted without informed consent, and which may be irreversible, such as forced hysterectomy, forced caesarean section, forced sterilization, forced abortion, and forced use of contraceptives, especially for particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged women and girls, such as those living with HIV, women and girls with disabilities, indigenous and afro-descendent women and girls, pregnant adolescents and young mothers, older women, and women and girls from national or ethnic minorities."

As Mr. Casey will briefly explain at the press conference and document with Jubilee Campaign's legal memorandum on the Convention Against Torture to which China is a signatory, China's One Child Policy, as it is currently being administered by government officials in China constitutes actionable torture and crimes against humanity in violation of binding international norms. Jubilee Campaign representatives on Human Rights Day last December also visited the Chinese Embassy in the Hague to present to the Chinese Government "AN OPEN LETTER TO CHINESE PRESIDENT XI LINPING TO END CHINA'S ONE CHILD POLICY," enclosing a copy of the complaint by the COALITION TO END VIOLATION AGAINST PREGNANT WOMEN that the JUBILEE CAMPAIGN filed last August before the UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN representing 37 Chinese women who were forcibly aborted, and/or sterilized, as well as subjected to confiscatory fines, by the Chinese government for alleged violations of China's One Child Policy. The Open Letter, signed by THE INTERNATIONAL TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION ON THE LAW OF LIFE, THE JUSTICE FOUNDATION, THE JUBILEE CAMPAIGN, WOMEN'S RIGHTS WITHOUT FRONTIERS, and THE COALITION TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST PREGNANT WOMEN concludes with this sentence: "President Jinping, you are in a unique position to stop this horrendous violence against women and the financial incentives and penalties that encourage it. As you commence your term as China's President may the end of the One Child Policy be your earliest legacy to the Chinese people."

About the Jubilee Campaign
Jubilee Campaign is an international charitable organization that seeks to be a "voice for the voiceless" promoting the human rights of all, particularly women and children in countries which imprison, terrorize or otherwise oppress them.