A Mother's Ordeal

With names changed to prevent retribution by the Communist Party of China (CPC), Mosher writes in the first person about "Chi An", a girl born to a Chinese family with the traditional beliefs that boys were worth more than girls. As such, her family had no birthday celebration for her and did not mark the date of her birth down. The first few chapters cover significant memories from childhood, including the death of her father and the trials underwent by her family during the Great Chinese Famine brought about by agricultural mismanagement as well as highly inflated reports of crop production figures.[1]

Chi An grew up surrounded by the ideologies of the Communist Party and in her youth worked for the CPC. Later in life, Chi An studied to become a nurse where she performed her first abortion at age 16, thus beginning her career as a nurse carrying out the One-child Policy through abortion, contraception, and sterilizations all in efforts to meet the birth quotas imposed by party officials. Chi An finds a suitor and they become married, after a fashion, and have a healthy baby boy as their first child. The couple became pregnant with a second child, but were forced to abort the baby as it was illegal.

Chi An takes a job at the Liaoning Truck Factory as a company nurse, where all female employees are required once a month to write down on a public message board that they are obeying the CPC and its single-child directives by not becoming pregnant. Around this time, Chi An's husband is granted a student visa to study abroad in the United States. Chi An's husband invited her and their child to the United States to be with him after they had received temporary visas. During their time in the United States, Chi An becomes pregnant. Her superiors at the Liaoning Truck Factory and those involved in the enforcement of the One-child policy pressure Chi An to abort her child as it is a second child and thus illegal. In the story, Chi An reveals that CPC members visit her family and threaten them with punitive action unless "remedial measures" are taken, that is to say, an abortion on the second child. Chi An and her husband seek asylum in the United States in order to live there and have their second child far away from the reach of the CPC. With the help of Mosher, Chi An and family are granted asylum.