NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.....the worth of a soul

I saw this super cute picture of this little girl and she seemed to be saying her prayers before taking her nap. But I noticed that she seemed to be "swimming" in a sea of "yellow and green and blue" sleeping bags.

This is what the caption read: A preschool student looks up as other children take an afternoon nap in a classroom of a school for children of migrant workers in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, January 10, 2013. China's one-child policy has produced less trusting, less trustworthy and less competitive children compared to the generation born before the policy was introduced, a study has found. Picture taken January 10, 2013. (Courtesy Yahoo news) 

What?

Breaking News: China has reversed it's long standing policy of family's having  only 1 child.

What happens to family's who have multiple births; twins, even triplets? What happens when another baby comes?

Rui'an, China: Yu Rongfen was seven months pregnant when city officials came knocking at her door. It was her second pregnancy, and she was hiding the fact from authorities.
Fearing the worst, she hid in an upstairs room. But she was helpless as dozens of men overwhelmed her family and took her to the city’s family planning bureau. There, it became apparent that staff at the bureau had orders to forcibly perform a late-term abortion, despite desperate pleas from Yu and her family.

Seriously?

When did this happen? If you're old enough, you may remember your parents talking about this in the early seventies; I do. My mom was really upset about this. I remember wondering why, because "We weren't Chinese". The backlash was that many Chinese families would send their only children to relatives in the US for protection. They wanted more children.  

China first introduced measures to rein in population growth in 1971, with the one-child rule implemented towards the end of the decade. According to official health ministry data released in March, Chinese doctors have performed more than 330 million abortions in the past 40 years, and inserted more than 400 million intrauterine contraceptive devices.

What is happening here? In 1995 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints issued a proclamation to "the world", concerning our most endangered resource  the family. 

When President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) introduced the family proclamation at the general Relief Society meeting on September 23, 1995, he said its purpose was to “warn and forewarn”¹¹ the world against deviating from its standards. Since then, the document has been published in many languages, has been repeatedly discussed in general conference, and is displayed in meetinghouses and homes internationally. It is a prophetic proclamation provided by a loving Heavenly Father to give guidance to His children—guidance that was never more needed than it is today. (Still a Clarion Call Ensign 2013)

I remember this being mentioned on the news, I wasn't a member of the Church then, but I recall the media frenzy and thinking:" Wow, this Church has a lot of guts to take a stand like this, and not just for it's members, but for the "whole world". It was like the Church was "calling out" the world to wake up and take notice of what was and is happening to people and to families.
Did China take notice?

Demographers had previously estimated that between 200 million and 400 million births were “averted” as a direct result of the one-child policy. If born, they may have joined the 200 million or so Chinese still living below the poverty line today.

Why Now?
"Among a raft of social and economic reforms announced by the government in November, couples will now be allowed to have a second child if one of the parents is an only child."

Here is a story, in the Bible and also in the Book of Moses is the story of Cain and Abel.
Moses 5:32-36
32 And Cain went into the field, and Cain talked with Abel, his brother. And it came to pass that while they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother and slew him.
33 And Cain gloried in that which he had done, saying: I am free, surely the flocks of my brother fall into my hands
34 And the Lord said unto Cain: Where is Abel thy brother? And he said: I know not. Am I my brothers keeper?
35 And the Lord said: What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries unto me from the ground.
36 And now you shall be cursed from the earth, which has opened her mouth to receive your brothers blood from your hand 

 But the policy’s negative social consequences are well documented. While attitudes are changing, a traditional preference for boys means hospitals in China are not allowed to divulge the sex of unborn babies to their parents. Female infanticide and the under-reporting of female births are on the decline, but China’s imbalanced sex ratio means by 2030 there will be 30 million men who will be unable to find a wife.

When King Herod was told by the Magi that the Christ child had been born and was being hailed as the new "King of Israel", he was furious. So he asked the Magi rather facetiously as to the whereabouts of this new king, so that he could go and pay honor to him. In Bethlehem they said. So Herod issued a decree and sent battle hardened soldiers to Bethlehem to kill every baby boy under the age of 1 years old. But I feel that in this frenzy, the soldiers didn't ask questions like "Hello, how old is your son". I don't think that any mercy was given and a lot of children were killed at that point. What was the reason? Well government stability, you can't have two monarchs ruling at the same time.

Is China cursed from the earth?  

Decades of the one-child policy has seen China’s fertility rate plunge, and its population age rapidly.  China’s workforce declined for the first time last year, and the economy is fast being confronted with a dreaded situation of having too few young people to support the elderly.  And a “4-2-1” socio-demographic phenomenon is emerging where the only child will end up having to support not just their parents, but all four grandparents.

What does this mean to me, or to you? As I was reading this, it was like a train wreck and I had to call "911".  Let him who has ears hear and eyes see.

All quotes from "Kiama Independent Lake Times Jan 10 2014