——一个亲历强制流产女性的时代启蒙与反思

作者：钱钰琳

编辑：胡丽莉 校对：程筱筱 翻译：戈冰

我叫钱钰琳，出生在1991年的中国海南。我这一代人，从小接受的教育里，计划生育是一项正确而必要的国策，课本上说，它让国家摆脱了贫困，让社会更加稳定有序。那时候，我从未怀疑过这些话的真实性，甚至理所当然地认为，国家对生育的管理，是一种合理的安排，而不是对个人的干预。直到2012年，我第一次怀孕，我才真正明白，这项所谓的“国策”，意味着什么。那一年，我被医院查出怀孕八周，因为没有结婚，我被认定为违反了计划生育政策，随后计划生育办公室的人直接进入我的宿舍，把我带到医院，在未经我明确同意的情况下，强制实施了流产手术。那一天，我躺在手术台上，身体的疼痛远不及内心的绝望强烈，因为我第一次意识到，我的身体并不完全属于我自己，而是可以被一种更高权力决定命运的对象。那不是一次普通的手术，而是一种无声却彻底的否定，它否定的不只是一个未出生的生命，也否定了我作为一个独立个体应当拥有的选择权。

在那之后的很长一段时间里，我试图说服自己接受这一切，我告诉自己，这是国家政策，是时代的要求，个人必须服从整体的需要。可多年以后，当我看到中国开始全面开放二胎、三胎，甚至不断通过各种方式鼓励和催促女性生育的时候，我内心深处一直压抑的疑问，开始重新浮现出来。同样是怀孕，在2012年，我的怀孕被认定为错误，被强制终止，而在今天，怀孕却被赞扬，被鼓励，被视为一种对国家的贡献。这种巨大的反差，让我第一次认真思考一个问题：如果生育是一种责任，那么当年为什么不允许我承担这种责任？如果生育是一种权利，那么当年为什么剥夺了我的权利？当一种行为可以在不同的年代，被完全相反地定义为错误和正确的时候，那么所谓的对与错，究竟是基于什么标准？

我逐渐意识到，在这种不断变化的政策背后，个体从来不是被真正考虑的中心。计划生育时代，国家需要减少人口，于是女性的生育被严格限制，甚至可以被强制终止；而当人口开始下降，国家需要增加人口时，生育又被重新赋予了新的意义，女性再次被赋予新的角色和责任。在这个过程中，唯一不变的是，决定权始终不在个体手中，而是在更高层面的权力结构之中。女性的身体，在某种意义上，被当作一种可以根据需要进行调节的工具，而不是完全属于个人的存在。

这种认识，并不是在一瞬间形成的，而是在经历和时间中慢慢累积起来的。我开始明白，我曾经经历的强制流产，不仅仅是一段个人的不幸经历，更是一种时代逻辑下的必然结果。在那个逻辑里，个体的意愿可以被忽略，个体的痛苦可以被解释为必要的代价，而个体本身，只是一个更大目标中的一部分。当我再看到那些鼓励生育的宣传时，我感受到的，不再是简单的愤怒，而是一种更深的清醒，因为我已经明白，在那种体系下，生或者不生，从来都不是一个纯粹属于个人的问题，而是一种可以被定义、被改变、甚至被强制执行的决定。

也正是从那时起，我开始真正思考自由的意义。我逐渐明白，自由并不是单纯拥有某种权利，而是拥有决定是否行使这种权利的可能性。如果一个人可以被强制不生，也可以被鼓励必须生，那么她真正缺少的，并不是生育本身，而是选择的权利。当一个社会可以在短短十几年之间，从限制生育转向鼓励生育，却从未真正面对和反思那些曾经被迫放弃的生命和人生时，我开始意识到，真正需要被启蒙的，不只是个人，而是对个体价值本身的重新认识。我的经历让我明白，一个人真正的尊严，并不在于她是否生育，而在于她是否可以决定自己的命运，而不是被时代的需要所决定。

When does my uterus really belong to me?

— Enlightenment and Reflection on the Age of a Female Personally Forced Abortion

By Qian Yulin

Editor: Hu Lili Proofreading: Cheng Xiaoxiao Translation: Ge Bing

Reflecting on 2012 forced abortions due to unmarried pregnancies, the authors reflect on individual choice and body autonomy under policy changes that range from restricting births to encouraging them.

I was born in Hainan, China, in 1991. My generation was raised to learn that family planning is a correct and necessary national policy. Textbooks say that it has lifted the country out of poverty and made society more stable and orderly. At the time, I never doubted the veracity of these remarks, even assuming that state management of childbearing was a rational arrangement, not an individual intervention. It wasn’t until 2012, when I was first pregnant, that I really understood what this so-called “state policy” meant. That year, when I was found pregnant for eight weeks by the hospital, and unmarried, I was deemed to have violated family planning policies. Then family planning officers entered my dorm room directly and took me to the hospital, where they forced an abortion without my express consent. That day, I lay on the operating table, in far less pain than I had felt in my own despair, as I realized for the first time that my body did not belong entirely to me, but could be the object of a higher power to decide my fate. It was not a normal operation, but a silent but complete denial of not just an unborn life, but of the choice I should have as an individual.

And for a long time afterward, I tried to convince myself of this, and I told myself that this was national policy, that this was the time, and that individuals had to obey the needs of the whole. But years later, as I watched China open up to second and third births in general, and even encourage and urge women to have children in a variety of ways, deep-seated doubts began to resurface. Also pregnant, in 2012, my pregnancy was wrongly ruled out and forced to end, but today, pregnancy is praised, encouraged and seen as a contribution to the country. For the first time, this contrast has made me think hard about why I was not allowed to take responsibility if giving birth was a responsibility. If giving birth is a right, why did it deprive me of it? What are the criteria for right and wrong when a behavior can be defined, in different times, as wrong and right in exactly the opposite way?

I came to realize that behind this changing policy, the individual was never really at the center of consideration. In the era of family planning, when the state needed to reduce the population, women’s births were severely restricted or even ended by force; when the population began to decline and the state needed to increase the population, childbearing was given new meaning and women were given new roles and responsibilities. In the process, the only thing that remains constant is that the decision is always not in the hands of the individual, but in the power structure at a higher level. Women’s bodies, in a sense, are used as tools to adjust as needed, rather than as a purely personal presence.

This realization does not emerge in a flash, but rather slowly builds up through experience and time. I’m beginning to understand that the forced abortion I experienced was not just a personal misadventure but a logical corollary of the times. In that logic, the will of the individual can be ignored, the pain of the individual can be interpreted as a necessary cost, and the individual itself is only part of a larger goal. When I saw the propaganda encouraging procreation again, I felt not a simple outrage but a deeper sense of well being, because I had learned that in that system, having or not having a child was never a purely personal issue, but a decision that could be defined, changed and even enforced.

And that’s when I really started thinking about the meaning of freedom. I have come to understand that freedom is not simply a right, but the possibility of deciding whether to exercise it. If a person can be forced to give birth or encouraged to give birth, what she really lacks is not the right to give birth per se, but the right to choose. When a society could, in just over a decade, move from restricting to encouraging childbearing, without ever really facing and reflecting on the lives and lives that were once forced to give up, I began to realize that what was really needed to be enlightened was not just the individual, but a new appreciation of individual values themselves. My experience taught me that a person’s true dignity is not whether she gives birth, but whether she decides her own destiny, not whether it is determined by the needs of the times.