The middle-aged woman squats on the floor of her filthy dismal shack on the toxic fringes of Shanghai, and talks without embarrassment about how many abortions she’s had.
Her firstborn was a son, and every baby she conceived after that was aborted. The alternative was a fine of $10,000 or more for each birth under China’s one-child policy: far too much for a simple peasant like her. She is just glad she did not bear any girls before hitting the jackpot with a son.
The woman’s story is wholly unremarkable in every way, except for one: she comes from the home town of my eldest adopted daughter. And she could so easily have been her mother.