While China outlaws forced abortions, its laws do not expressly prohibit or even define late-term termination.

Jin, an 18-year-old, met 30-year-old Yang in September 1998. They moved in together. A year and a half later, in 2000, they discovered Jin was pregnant but couldn’t get married right away because she had not reached 20, the marriage age.

After her birthday in April, they got married on May 5. Now all that was missing was the piece of paper allowing them to have a child. So about a month before Jin’s due date, her husband Yang set out to curry favor with Di Wenjun, head of the neighborhood family planning office in Anshan.The next day he paid for another meal with Di and the village’s Communist Party secretary and accountant. He said the mood was cordial and that the officials toasted him for finding a young wife and starting a family. But three weeks later, on September 7, when Yang was away opening a new building supplies store, Jin was taken from her mother-in-law’s home and forced into having the abortion.