A new art exhibit opening tonight at the China Institute in New York City sheds light on the monumental human rights issues presented by China’s ongoing one-child policy — in which over 40 million pre-born girls in China have been aborted “due to the preference parents give to having a son” as artist Prune Nourry explains.
CNN reporter Flora Zhang interviews Nourry on her art exhibit entitled “Terracotta Daughters”:
“‘Terracotta Daughters’ is a project about sex-selective abortions in India and China, which are one-third of the world’s population,” says Nourry. “There is this huge imbalance between boys and girls. So I created this army as a kind of symbol.”
The statues were modeled after eight orphan girls she met and photographed through The Children of Madaifu, an “orphanage without walls” with several locations throughout China. By selling the project’s initial eight sculptures, today Nourry “supports the education of these eight little girls for a minimum of three years.”
On the exhibit’s official website, Nourry presents a stark picture of the consequences of China’s forced-abortion policy: “This leads to disastrous consequences for the situation of women in Asia (kidnappings of children and women, forced marriages, prostitution, population migrations, etc.)”
Human rights advocates worldwide continue to raise alarm regarding the effects of this deadly policy, enacted on September 25, 1980. Leading international coalition Women’s Rights Without Frontiers works to expose and oppose forced abortion, gendercide and sexual slavery in China.
A newborn baby in China is rescued from a sewer pipe (Source: WRWF)
The group’s latest report to the United Nations provides detailed, horrific accounts of human rights abuses — over 3,800 words carefully authored by Women’s Rights Without Frontiers president and Yale Law School graduate Reggie Littlejohn.
“The mayhem caused by China’s One Child Policy continues unabated,” she writes. “It has taken some troubling new twists, with people being driven to mental breakdown, murder and suicide, as well as an obstetrician using her position of trust in order to traffic babies.” Littlejohn recently spoke at a Family Research Council event on her important work.
Biologist Rob Brooks analyzes the United Nations’ own figures on this issue, concluding that ”approximately 30 million more men than women will reach adulthood and enter China’s mating market by 2020.”
Because “Terracotta Daughers” approaches this social issue using the arts, CNN reports that sculptor Prune Nourry “didn’t encounter difficulties with the Chinese government in pursuing this project in China.”
In fact, when the New York City exhibition concludes on October 4, Nourry plans to bury the 108 stone statues in China “until 2030, the year that, according to Chinese sociologists, men will have the hardest time finding a wife because of the skewed gender ratio.”
The French-born artist follows a long line of social activists who put their creative talents to work for a greater cause, as Bound4LIFE noted in a relevant post:
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the nation-shifting book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In the time of its greatest popularity, it was second in readership only to the Bible… It changed the hearts of millions in a way that allowed them to see African Americans as humans worthy of dignity.
Where are the musicians who will write life-songs to challenge a nation? Where are the writers who will use their pen as a sword, like abolitionists did over the issue of slavery?
Prune Nourry is one artist driven to unveil the ugly realities of forced abortion in a compelling, culturally relevant way. Other significant efforts for life in this arena include Heart Galleries, photographic exhibits of foster children in need of adoption, and works of art on public display worldwide.
To uncover the prevalence of sex-selection abortions, a talented filmmaking team spent three years producing It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World — filmed on location in China and India, and now the recipient of several prestigious documentary awards.
Meanwhile, the non-profit group that advised China in crafting the one-child policy has sets its sights on furthering its reach across the globe. Pathfinder International, founded in 1957 with close ties to the eugenics movement, unveiled its strategy and intentions in a new academic book titled Critical Issues in Reproductive Health (Springer Publishing, 2014).
“We do not mostly provide preventative medical care [or] cure diseases or prevent them. What we do is social change,” writes author and recently-retired Pathfinder International president Daniel E. Pellegrom.
Under his 26-year leadership starting in 1985, Pathfinder and Planned Parenthood Federation led the way in funneling U.S. taxpayers’ dollars to fund abortions internationally. As reported by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, his new book “closes with a call for legal abortion – with no mention of safety.”
“This is not about public health; it is about public policy,” Pellegrom concludes.
Rather than considering human lives as resources to be analyzed, engineered or eliminated, artist Prune Nourry portrays the unique worth and value of each person in her sculptures. To quote a CNN reporter, “No two statues have the same features.”
Sex-selective abortions, exposed in a Live Action video series as a prevalent trend across America, are based on a judgment call that one gender is more valued over another.
Nourry sees it differently: “The fact that you want to select your baby — that’s the myth of ‘the perfect child.’”
At Bound4LIFE, we recognize sex-selective abortion as an affront to the value and sanctity of human life. Join us in praying for Reggie Littlejohn and other pro-life advocates working to rescue lives at risk — along with artists like Prune Nourry, boldly using their creative talents to challenge cultural norms that are detrimental to life and liberty.
LifeNews Note: Reprinted with permission from Bound4Life.
