Jacob Sullum highlights the craziness of Western advocates for China's one child policy, along with the attendant barbarism that accompanies enforcement:

The tools that Chinese officials use to enforce this policy include "family planning contracts," birth permits, gynecological surveillance, fines that may amount to several years of income, denial of employment and government services, and forced abortions, sterilizations, and IUD insertions. CHRD finds that enforcement is wildly uneven, varying from one jurisdiction to another and over time in the same jurisdiction. While women in some parts of the country may get away with bearing an "over-quota" child by paying a fine, elsewhere women in the eighth or ninth month of pregnancy are abducted so their not-quite-born children can be killed and extracted. Areas where limits on family size are flouted for years with impunity may be suddenly subject to crackdowns in which population control officials use fines, property seizures, beatings, arbitrary detention, and kidnapping of relatives to whip people into line.

Yet another reason to be thankful that we live in a free country. The arbitrariness of the policy only underscores the tyranny under which the Chinese live. But problems like these never bother fans of enlightened despotism like Thomas Friedman and his ilk. Funny that they don't seem to be rushing to move there or even volunteering to follow similar restrictions on their own families.