Despite being a permanent resident in Taiwan, as an American woman, the overturning of Roe v. Wade has been a roller-coaster of emotion.
Adding to that pain have been all the people who cannot get pregnant offering their opinions on whether women are entitled to basic human rights, as though anyone with a uterus is just a potential incubator.
If anything, I feel grateful to be living in Taiwan, where my right to reproductive healthcare still exists, although it might be imperfect.
Taiwanese law allows for abortion, but carries a whiff of patriarchy. For instance, a married woman seeking an abortion requires spousal consent.
The language of the original law is also unacceptably eugenicist; it references “upgrading the quality of the population,” but not women’s rights.
To be clear, abortion should absolutely remain legal in Taiwan. If anything, the law must be amended to make abortion a basic right, not a eugenicist fantasy.
Thus, imagine my disappointment reading Dino Wei’s Taipei Times article (“Abortion laws affected Taiwan’s society,” July 7, page 8). His argument rests on seeing women as breeding stock, not human beings. This should horrify anyone capable of becoming pregnant.
Bodily autonomy means a person’s body cannot be used against their will, even to “save the life” of another. We do not do this with any other procedure. Even if someone is the only suitable organ donor to a dying person, we accept that they cannot be forced to give up a body part. We do not even do this to corpses without prior consent.
Therefore, even if you believe a fetus is a person, it is still unacceptable to force someone to carry it against their will.
It does not matter if you are offended by the person’s sexual behavior. In other words, abortion is not a referendum on whether women having sex is bad (it is not).
Most of Wei’s arguments offer little to no evidence. He wrote that “gynecologists are even lamenting” this trend. Which gynecologists? Name some, please. “Young students use abortion as contraception”? There are no statistics to back that up. If the “vast majority” of abortions are performed for health reasons, and data on how many are unintended pregnancies remain confidential, one cannot possibly know that. If abortion rates are falling, that directly contradicts the assumption that younger women are seeking it.
Many of these young women and sad gynecologists likely exist in people’s heads, not the real world.
Even if young people are getting abortions rather than using contraception, the solution is not to hijack their bodies to increase Taiwan’s population — the solution is improved sex education. This should be obvious.
Most offensive is the assumption that Taiwan should rethink abortion because of population decline. Most people want children eventually; the solution to population decline is to foster a society where people feel secure having children, not treating women like egg sacks.
We are not egg sacks, we are people.
Jenna Lynn Cody is a teacher trainer based in Taipei.
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
After declaring Iran’s military “gone,” US President Donald Trump appealed to the UK, France, Japan and South Korea — as well as China, Iran’s strategic partner — to send minesweepers and naval forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. When allies balked, the request turned into a warning: NATO would face “a very bad” future if it refused. The prevailing wisdom is that Trump faces a credibility problem: having spent years insulting allies, he finds they would not rally when he needs them. That is true, but superficial, as though a structural collapse could be caused by wounded feelings. Something
Former Taipei mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) founding chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Thursday, making headlines across major media. However, another case linked to the TPP — the indictment of Chinese immigrant Xu Chunying (徐春鶯) for alleged violations of the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法) on Tuesday — has also stirred up heated discussions. Born in Shanghai, Xu became a resident of Taiwan through marriage in 1993. Currently the director of the Taiwan New Immigrant Development Association, she was elected to serve as legislator-at-large for the TPP in 2023, but was later charged with involvement
Out of 64 participating universities in this year’s Stars Program — through which schools directly recommend their top students to universities for admission — only 19 filled their admissions quotas. There were 922 vacancies, down more than 200 from last year; top universities had 37 unfilled places, 40 fewer than last year. The original purpose of the Stars Program was to expand admissions to a wider range of students. However, certain departments at elite universities that failed to meet their admissions quotas are not improving. Vacancies at top universities are linked to students’ program preferences on their applications, but inappropriate admission
RSS