A young woman adopted from China who now lives in the United States is speaking about his gratitude for the courage of his birth parents in helping him survive China’s One-Child Policy. His experience led him to join the pro-life movement.
Shahannah was born in Southern China’s Guangxi autonomous region, and told The Epoch Times that he was found abandoned in a small box when he was a baby. “I’ve known about China’s one-child policy for as long as I can remember,” he said. “The pressure that they put on people to have only one child, and especially in a male-driven society, to have a boy. I know that I am one of the many girls who have been abandoned and basically left to die because of the policy.”
Although her start in life may lead some to feel resentful, Shaohannah says she understands why her parents were forced to decide to leave her.
“The choices they may have had to make may not have been the choices they wanted for me,” she said. But I am very grateful for the fact that they chose an option where I was saved, and lived. [My birth mom] gave me this gift in allowing me to have the life I have today. I wouldn’t have anything I have today if it wasn’t for him, or for him making the choices he did, which I’m sure weren’t easy.”
China’s One-Child Policy was established more than 40 years ago, and almost immediately led to abortion discrimination, because of the cultural preference for men. From time to time, Chinese officials allow some parents to have two children if the first is a girl. Unfortunately, this means that if the second was a woman rather than a man, and survived the pregnancy, she must have been abandoned, like Shaohannah, or killed.
Others were left behind orphanages, suffering under terrible, inhumane conditions. Additionally, women who became pregnant with more than the permitted number of children were forced to have abortions, often violently. Now, China has highest suicide rate of women in the world, and violence against women is widespread.
Shaohannah now spends her time working to save preborn children, serving as the capitol area regional coordinator for Students for Life of America (SFLA) in the Washington, DC area.
“One message I want to convey is that life is a gift. It’s a gift given to me that allows me to continue fighting, and to see it cherished more than when I was born,” he said. In July of 2022, he testified about his history before the DC Council, asking them , “How much is a boy like me worth?”
And despite being bullied because of his pro-life beliefs, he is said to be unafraid. “I love that I can do something I love,” she said. “I’m very blessed because I have an amazing team, and it’s a group of people who come from different backgrounds … but we can all be united in the fact that abortion ends human life, and we will work to see abortion. be unimaginable in our lives.”
In China, there are hundreds of millions of missing children, thanks to abortion, and in the United States, there are an estimated 63 million abortions committed ever since Roe v. Wade was adopted in 1973. Numbers like those help Shaohannah know to keep fighting.
“It’s about the culture of death. [China has] created this devaluation of life in the womb, and we have it here too. This is not new. For me, that is why part of this fight for preborn lives is so important, because it stands against this culture of death … desensitization and dehumanizing,” he said.
“[Roe v. Wade] was the roadblock we overcame to make abortion not only illegal but unsinkable. We have a poster, a blueprint,” she added. “We want women to feel supported because women don’t need abortion to succeed, they don’t need abortion to be equal. They can have their careers, their dreams, and their children too.”
