China has made remarkable progress in reducing preventable maternal deaths and

improving women’s SRH. The national maternal mortality ratio has decreased from
89 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 16.9 per 100,000 live births in 2020.. Also china
has already removed its one child policy and replaced it with three child policy in
2021
The national health commission of china said it would guide local governments and
health institutions to make the changes, including the provision of “targeted services
to the masses through health education, psychological counselling, traditional
Chinese medicine services, drug treatment, surgical treatment, assisted reproductive
technology and other means to improve the level of infertility prevention and
treatment”.
Reproductive health education campaigns would also be carried out to enhance
public awareness while “preventing unintended pregnancy and reducing abortions
that are not medically necessary”.
China aims to aims to reduce abortions, which have been generally readily
accessible for many years.
Around one hundred countries have some restrictions, typically permitting
abortion only in limited situations, including for socioeconomic reasons, risks to
the physical or mental health of the woman, or the presence of fetal anomalies. 
 Reproductive rights, including the right to access abortion, are grounded in
internationally recognized human rights. Human Rights Watch released a
new question-and-answer document that articulates the human rights imperative,
guided by international law, to ensure access to abortion, which is critical to
guaranteeing many fundamental human rights for women, girls, and pregnant
people.

Where safe and legal abortion services are restricted or not fully available, a number
of human rights may be at risk, including the rights to life, to health, to information, to
nondiscrimination and equality, to be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment, to privacy, to decide the number and spacing of children, to liberty, to
enjoy the benefits of scientific progress, and to freedom of conscience and religion.

Banning or restricting abortion services does not eliminate the need for abortion.
Rather than lower abortion rates, restricting abortion access increases the risk of
unsafe procedures and creates a danger of introducing criminal laws so that people
are reported to the police or prosecuted for suspected abortions. These risks
especially affect people living in poverty or who are otherwise subject to systemic
discrimination, Human Rights Watch said.  

Reproductive Choice - Abortion

Unsafe abortion is also a major cause of maternal mortality and morbidity. States
Parties’ reports to the Committee often fail to contain official data on this due to the
illegal nature of abortion in many countries, but they consistently demonstrate a
correlation between unsafe abortion and high rates of maternal mortality and
morbidity, presented as haemorrhaging and complications of pregnancy.

Thus, Zimbabwe reported that haemorrhage and infection after abortion are major
causes of death, though actual figures are not ascertainable given the illegality of
abortion. The Dominican Republic, similarly, reported that "clandestine abortions"
are the third leading cause of maternal death (following toxemia, and haemorrhages
during childbirth), but noted "heavy underreporting".

There are grounds for the view that laws which criminalize health services that only
women need - whether aimed at the persons who provide such services, or the
women who receive them - are discriminatory as such. The criminalization of
abortion is particularly heinous, because it not only impairs women’s right to
reproductive choice - to make free and responsible decisions concerning matters
that are key to control of their lives - but also exposes them to the serious health
risks of unsafe abortion, violating their rights to bodily integrity and, in the most
extreme cases, to life itself.

In many countries there are exceptions to the criminal norm, allowing for legal
abortion in limited circumstances, such as in cases of danger to the life of the mother
(or the fetus), or where pregnancy has resulted from rape. In Indonesia, however,
rape does not constitute grounds for legal abortion, which means that the state is
effectively compounding the sexual violence targeted at the woman by forcing her to
carry the resultant pregnancy.

Abortions are widely accepted and performed across China – they are accessible to
all women and are offered by the nation’s family planning programme, public and
private hospitals, as well as clinics countrywide.

They have been legal for more than half a century since 1953, making China one of
the first developing countries in the world to make abortion legal and easily
accessible.

Traditional Chinese values largely perceive that the right to life begins from the
moment of childbirth.

Abortions to terminate unwanted pregnancies are therefore hardly seen as “murder”

or something to be guilty about in the atheist nation, and public debates involving
strong “pro-life” or “pro-choice” views are practically non-existent.

The current birth rate for China in 2022 is 10.902 births per 1000 people, a 2.3%
decline from 2021. The birth rate for China in 2021 was 11.159 births per 1000
people, a 2.25% decline from 2020.

China has among the highest rates of abortion globally. From 2015 to 2019, the
country recorded 40,200,000 pregnancies annually — 23.2 million of which were
unintended and 17.7 million that ended in abortion. The data shows that about 78
percent of unintended pregnancies in China end in abortion. The global average of
unintended pregnancies that end in abortion is 61 percent.