Duc in Altum

Perhaps the major American television networks should head over to China to find the next star for one of their reality TV shows about a man looking for a bride. They will have many men to choose from because, as a missionary of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions noted in an interview with Vatican Radio, China may soon become the country with the most number of bachelors in the world thanks to its one-child policy. In the interview, Father Giancarlo Politi spoke about the effects of the one-child policy.

"There is still a need to seek by all means to have at least a male child," said the priest.

As a result of the policy, instituted in 1979, an estimated 25 million young men in China might remain single for life.

"The family without heirs leaves the couple in a relationship of virtual sterility, also from the human and not just the procreative point of view," he said.

This policy is "truly inhuman," stated the missionary, in that it stipulates "compulsory abortion for those without permission to have a second child," said Father Politi.

Source: Zenit

In addition, Fr. Politi points out that, of course, children are born outside the dictates of the law. For those parents with means, the child may still be registered. However, for children who cannot be registered, they are not considered to exist in a legal sense. And in fact, there is no way to know how many children have actually been born. One can imagine that these children are also open to exploitation by those who would blackmail them using their "illegal" status.

This is a tragic situation of a social policy gone awry. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a sense that the one-child policy will be abandoned any time soon. In the meantime, people do what they can to help. As I noted in a recent post, a colleague of mine and his wife are doing what they can by adopting a little girl from China partially because they recognized the effects that this policy has on girls, who are often simply abandoned.