A Year After China Quake, a Baby Boom

The devastation is still raw from the earthquake that snuffed out thousands of young lives in rural China a year ago, reports the Los Angeles Times, but many grieving parents have found new hope in the form of another baby. More than 10% of new mothers in one Sichuan Province hospital had lost children in the quake—a grief that was only intensified by China's single-child policy.

Under fire for both its reproductive limits and its quake response, Beijing is providing fertility medication and operations to reverse vasectomies and tubal ligations for many middle-aged couples. "Now, we are better. A new life has been created to take the place of the one that was taken away," says a new father who lost his 11-year-old daughter last year.
(More China earthquake stories.)