China should be an object lesson on the dangers of state intervention into the womb.

By MEI FONG
Special to The Times
WITH immigration and reproductive rights as hot-button issues in upcoming U.S. elections, it’s worth considering how China’s one-child policy — recently expanded to a two-child limit — has affected its largest trading partner.

In a nutshell, the one-child policy has been great for America. The indirect benefits include a huge influx of Chinese students in U.S. educational institutions — more than one-quarter of 1 million at last count — to some 80,000 adoptees in American households. Most recently, a small but affluent wave of birth tourists have been swelling the coffers of American reproductive centers. Some come in search of treatments that are illegal or unregulated in China thanks to the one-child policy.

But while the one-child policy has indirectly benefited America, America, in turn, has been less than kind. We shut our doors to those suffering the worst excesses of the policy.

Read the full piece in The Seattle Times here.