I was hoping someone here could help or advise me as regards a family friend who is in something of a dilemma.

She is 5 months pregnant to her boyfriend, who was initially supportive, but appears to have gotten increasingly cold feet about the baby as time has progressed.

The boyfriend has now informed her that she will have to abort the child, as his wife has decided to renege on an agreed divorce. Wether he has made this up to enable him to walk away from the relationship or is in fact true is unclear.

She has a son by a previous marriage, so apart from the dangers of having an abortion at this stage, the authorities will probably force her to abort at some point if the marriage doesn't happen.

I brought up the possibility of adoption and she seems to be in favour of this option, but I have no real knowledge of what would be involved.

Can anyone point me in the right direction, or tell me what would be involved? I read about couples desperate to adopt all the time.

And before anyone asks - no I am not the boyfriend.

In China its the Min Zheng Ju that manages adoption.

mzj.km.gov.cn/structure/index.htm

If she is thinking about adoption then she needs to contact them about applying to put the baby on the list.

Sometimes people will just abandon (dump) the baby after birth, but a friend who rescued one of these kids told me its a real hassle to get the kid into school without the birth certificate and I imagine the hassles would only continue as the kid gets older, so better to go through the Min Zheng Ju who will handle the documentation,,if that is the way she decides to go.

abortion at 5 months? is that cool?

its definitely not cool.

But it happens, check the internet for a forced abortion that happened a few months ago in Xian. I think that was done at 7 months.

www.smh.com.au/[...]

Abortion is such a thorny issue. If you are the one who is pregnant and have to decide, I feel for you. It's not always an easy choice. Use protection to reduce the chance of pregnancy at least.

Yuantongsi,

My wife says that if she were to show up at the Min Zheng Ju, they would simply frog march her over to the abortion dept. of the local hospital.

She needs to show up with a willing to adopt couple to hand.

One option,,if you are up for it,,(deep breaths) is that you say the baby is yours, put your name on the birth certificate, then let the mother work out what she wants to do with it then, she can then adopt the baby out if she wants to. As a "foreign" fetus I am pretty sure the government won't terminate the pregnancy.

A friend of mine did this for his sister in law (who got pregnant to her bf while very young), he ended up taking the baby as his own and he and his wife raise it.

Yuantongsi,

I'm happy to help, but that's a step too far for me. We really don't want any more children.

Also I wasn't in the country 5 months ago, so I wouldn't want to get too familiar with the Chinese prison system when they did the math.

Maybe Yuantongsi's option could be worked out by asking the former boyfriend to do that. Sounds like a long shot, I know, but there don't seem to be many other options for gettin that baby out alive.

As much as you feel for your friend, you really can't get involved. All you can do is lens a sympathetic ear.
For a foreigner to get involved in a Chinese legal, although abhorrent, process is not smart.

To be honest, you only have one side of the story. In a face culture how much of the 'truth' have you really been told.