Chinese officials reported Monday that families with a child severely injured, disabled or killed in the May 12 earthquake are exempt from the country’s one-child policy.
Those families will be allowed to have another child according to a family planning organization.
Under the existing one-child policy guidelines, Chinese couples who have more than one child are punished by fines. Monday’s announcement stated that if a child born illegally was killed in the earthquake, the parents would no longer have to pay the fines.
Couples adopting one of the more than 4,000 children orphaned by the quake will also be exempt from the one-child policy, with no limits placed on the number of earthquake orphans they may adopt.
Officials stressed that before any adoptions would begin, every effort would be made to reunite the earthquake orphans with family.
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