According to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China Annual Report for 2008 (“2008 CECC Report”), “Violators of the [One Child] Policy are routinely punished with exorbitant fines, and in some cases, subjected to force sterilization, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and torture.” If a family has two children, many regions mandate sterilization and sterilization quotas apply. As stated in the 2008 State Department Kemp-Kasten UNFPA Determination letter, “Local officials required some women to receive abortions or be sterilized regardless of age or marital status in order to meet quotas.” Pressure to meet these quotas or targets can result in official corruption.  The 2008 CECC Report states, “In spring 2008, in a reported effort to meet local targets for sterilization, authorities in Tongwei County in Gansu province allegedly forcibly sterilized and detained for two moths a Tibetan woman who had abided by local population planning requirements.” Tongwei County also utilizes a system of paid informants – friends, neighbors, co-workers – to report on “unsterilized households” with two children, so that the women in these households can be coerced into being sterilized.

When the Family Planning Police force women to be sterilized for violating the One-Child Policy, these sterilizations are most often not performed by highly trained gynecological surgeons. Especially in the countryside, where the majority of the Chinese population lives, sterilizations are performed by personnel who lack adequate training, under unsterile conditions.  Often, infections and other complications ensue. Women have complained that their health was destroyed by these forced sterilizations.