(Newser)
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It's the kind of story you fervently hope is an Internet hoax: a picture of a bloody fetus next to a woman in a hospital bed makes the rounds online, supposedly offering proof that China forced her to have an abortion in her seventh month of pregnancy. But as the AFP reports, it's "basically true," or so admitted China today. Rights groups say Feng Jianmei, a woman in the northern Shaanxi province, was forced to end her pregnancy after she didn't pay a sizable fine for planning to have a second child.
The BBC reports that the US-based All Girls Allowed spoke to Feng's husband, who told them she was forced to go to the hospital, and restrained once there. "This is a serious violation of the National Population and Family Planning Commission's policies, jeopardizes the population control work, and has caused uneasiness in society," the provincial government said in an online statement. It recommended that those behind the abortion, who have not been identified, be punished. Late-term abortions have been banned in China since 2001.
