The interior ministry came under fire yesterday by lawmakers for a plan to perform voluntary abortions for illegal women immigrants from China held at a detention center.
Taiwan is a popular destination for illegal Chinese immigrants looking for jobs. Many of the workers are women who end up working as prostitutes and become pregnant.
"What the interior ministry plans is not right as it involves not only a thorny moral problem, but also the psychological condition of the women who could make such a decision in a fit of emotional trauma," said opposition PFP Legislator Lee Yung-ping (李永萍).
Her comment came after Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) announced the day before the ministry's plan to provide medical aid to illegal female immigrants from China who chose to abort their pregnancies.
Yu said 37 of the illegal immigrants held at the Hsinchu Detention Center pending repatriation to China are pregnant, and a number of them do not wish to have children.
Yu said his ministry would respect their wishes and pay the abortion costs for the women.
Yu criticized China for being too slow in taking back illegal migrants. ``No country in the world does not allow its citizens to return home,'' he said.
Bureau of Immigration chief Cheng Wen-chang said some of the women have tried to induce their own abortions.
``Usually, the women do not want to keep their babies, and sometimes they even try to fall from staircases in order to provoke a miscarriage,'' Cheng said.
KMT Legislator Chiang Chi-wen (江綺雯) said the ministry should think of the consequences and the possibility that an illegal immigrant may regret the decision after the procedure is over.
"What if the biological fathers accuse the government of forced abortion or trampling of human life since they are not consulted beforehand," she said.
Currently, the center has 37 pregnant women and 19 new mothers, including one whose son is almost a year old.
Ministry officials said the pregnancy of the illegal immigrants at the Hsinchu Center has become a problem not only in terms of finance but it would also be unfair to keep children at the detention center.
Lawmakers said the government would violate the law if it provided the illegal immigrants with access to the abortion procedure, and it could draw protests from China for such a policy.
Under the Genetic Health Law (優生保健法), a pregnant woman is only allowed to have an abortion if her baby is found to have serious health defects, giving birth would create risks to the mother's life, or the pregnancy resulted from rape or seduction.
In a press conference held late yesterday, Yu defended his decision, saying the related measures will be taken in accordance to the the law.
Yu said that his ministry will first seek consent from those female Chinese stowaways, mainly detained in Chinglu detention center in northern Hsinchu County.
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