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“Between Socialist Revisionism and Women’s Liberation: Abortion with Chinese Characteristics” with Sarah Mellors Rodriguez
October 3 @ 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
The Carolina Asia Center and the Asian History working group at UNC are delighted to welcome Prof. Sarah Mellors Rodriguez of Emory University to campus to speak on her research into the politics and debates on abortion and birth control in 20th century China.
“Between Socialist Revisionism and Women’s Liberation: Abortion With Chinese Characteristics”
China has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. This presentation explores the historical origins of this trend, revealing how abortion inadvertently became a primary method of fertility control. Moreover, this lecture demonstrates that abortion has long been the subject of intense ideological, feminist, and demographic debates in China.
Prof. Sarah Mellors Rodriguez, PhD is Acting Associate Professor of Chinese Humanities at Emory University. Her book, Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021 (Cambridge University Press, 2023), uses interviews and archival research to analyze how ordinary people navigated China’s shifting fertility policies both before and during the One Child Policy era.
