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.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
RSS