China's one-child policy causes silent suffering of mothers

The mainland's one-child policy has produced hundreds of millions of victims - the newborns killed every day, the fetuses forcibly aborted in the late stage of pregnancies and the women who bore them.

Public anger over forced birth control measures peaked in July when a photo - showing Shaanxi woman Feng Jianmei lying next to a blood-soaked, seven-month-old fetus which had been ripped from her body in a forced abortion - went viral online.

In another case in 1990, Gao Xiaoming , who was 22 and from Jingjiang in Fujian , underwent induced labour just a week before her second son was due. The baby was saved by her brother, 18, as he was thrown into a bucket in the delivery room.

"It was by the grace of God. A nurse who was responsible for my sister's operation allowed me to take my nephew away," said the boy's uncle, Terry Gao, who moved to Hong Kong last year. "I just ran as fast as I could after taking the baby from the pail. He is a rare lucky one among thousands of cases of induced labour and abortion that occurred every year in my hometown."

He Shaoying was caught by local officials in neighbouring Shishi when she was eight months' pregnant with her second child 20 years ago.

"I was told it was a boy after the induced labour was over," she said. "I remember him crying as soon as he was pushed from my body. But soon afterwards, the medical staff said he had died. Some of my friends working in the hospital said my boy was given an injection that killed him."