My father, who was an army doctor himself, took me in secret to the neighboring city’s clinic to end the pregnancy. The surgery was performed on a cold operating table, with no anesthesia. It was extremely painful. We both took the bus back home without saying a word to each other. We never talked about this abortion or my second coerced abortion again for over two decades until a few days ago when he read this story in my book. In my book I tell at length how my forced abortion experience was a combination of the law requiring an abortion if you are not married and the pressure of the society, giving young women no choice.
柴的父亲在20年前做的已经不错了，可能和他是医生有关。
The first time I became pregnant, I was 18 years old, a sophomore at Peking University. I was terrified and deeply ashamed. All I could think was a scene I saw a young couple when I first arrived Peking University, was being expelled in front of us freshman for she was found out in love and pregnant. The thought of being kicked out of school, which represented life, future, jobs, and a position in society, was unthinkable.
那时候国家没有钱养活怀孕和带小孩的大学生，当然柴也养活不了自己。
We did get married shortly after. But the baby was gone. That is the way it works in China.
That could be the way it works in the states many years ago, and even now in many cases if you have no way to support a family.
Similarly in my life, I now see how it was all threaded together. Started by Deng Xiaoping who decided to order the One-Child Policy, in addition to all these forced abortions, the policy led to the universities to expel young couples who were in love and pregnant, that led to my father and my boyfriend’s father taking me to end my pregnancies. And that led to the third time when I was pregnant, I knew where to go and what to do.
I was fully lost in this logical conclusion. If there had been no Deng or this one-child policy, would her father or even her boyfriend's encourage her to give birth to the baby when Chai and Feng had not enough to support a family?
It did not stop here, worst yet, by the fourth time, when I was pregnant, I was already escaped to Paris in 1990, the land of freedom. Alone and in a very bad place in my marriage, with advice from a Chinese couple who loved very much their own child, I did what I was taught to do: ended that pregnancy too.
So was that the fault of that Chinese couple? Was that the fault of all Chinese? Or is it because you have no way to support a family even on "a land of freedom"? A "free" decision at last.