<P> Some of the offending officials did not face penalties, although the government did respond by raising fines and calling on local officials to "expose the celebrities and high - income people who violate the family planning policy and have more than one child". Also, people who lived in the rural areas of China were allowed to have two children without punishment, although the family is required to wait a couple of years before having another child . </P> <P> The one - child policy has been challenged for violating a human right to determine the size of one's own proper family . According to a 1968 proclamation of the International Conference on Human Rights, "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children ." </P> <P> According to the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations was set for Huaiji County in Guangdong Province in one year due to reported disregard of the one - child policy . According to the article local officials were being pressured into purchasing portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages . The article also reported that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort, usually by an injection of saline solution . A 1993 book by social scientist Steven W. Mosher reported that women in their ninth month of pregnancy, or already in labour, were having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth . </P> <P> According to a 2005 news report by Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent John Taylor, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an abortion or sterilization in 2002 but ineffectively enforces the measure . In 2012, Feng Jianmei, a villager from central China's Shaanxi province was forced into an abortion by local officials after her family refused to pay the fine for having a second child . Chinese authorities have since apologized and two officials were fired, while five others were sanctioned . </P>

When did china change the one child policy