In China, Kids Of Unwed Mothers May Be Barred From Public Health Care, Education
Being a mom without a husband leaves many women in a legal gray zone where they are unable to access medical and other public services for themselves and their children. Some women are even fined.
When Liu, a 31-year-old Chinese insurance firm manager, learned she was pregnant in 2017, she resolved to keep her baby.
She tried to hide the fact that she was unmarried and pregnant from her colleagues at the private insurance firm where she works in Shanghai. She paid her own hospital bills rather than rely on public insurance and risk exposing her secret to the hospital and her employer.
Now the mother of a 22-month-old girl, Liu, who declined to share her full name for fear of social retribution, is facing a new challenge: accessing public health care and education for her child in Shanghai, where she has lived for nine years.
"I just felt this was a small, living being, that I should keep her and
