My name is Lu Yingying. I am a female, born on October 19, 1993, in Shenzhen, China. I am currently 32 years old. I am the mother of one son, who is also named as a respondent in these proceedings. I am submitting this declaration in support of my application for asylum in the United States.

I apply for asylum because I have been persecuted by the Chinese government on two separate grounds. First, I was subjected to two forced abortions under China’s family planning policy — procedures carried out against my will, under threat, at the hands of state officials. Second, after I began to express my views online and criticize government policies, authorities came directly to my home and threatened me with severe punishment. I cannot return to China. To do so would mean returning to the country that violated my body twice, took two of my children from me, and has already warned me that further resistance will be met with irreversible consequences.

I was born and raised in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China. I completed my university education and afterward began building a professional career. In December 2011, my son was born. His arrival brought tremendous joy to our home and to our families. My husband and I were hopeful about our future together.

Not long after my son was born, I became pregnant again. We were happy. I had no reason to believe that this pregnancy would be anything other than the beginning of our second child’s life.

Because China’s family planning policy at the time strictly prohibited having a second child, in October 2013, following a routine prenatal checkup at a local hospital, I was intercepted by personnel from the Family Planning Committee. They did not ask. They informed me that I was being taken to the Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Longgang District.

At the hospital, a doctor examined me briefly and then told me they would be performing an abortion immediately. I refused. I told them clearly and loudly that I did not consent. I asked to go home. I begged them to let me go. The family planning staff were unmoved. One of them spoke to me in a flat, cold voice: if I violated national regulations, they would notify the company where I worked, formally accuse me of breaking the law, and publicly disclose my personal information within my community.

At that time, I had just begun working at a company as an intern engineer. I had signed a multi-year contract. This job represented the beginning of my entire professional future. I pleaded with them. I told them I understood the policy. I told them the child was healthy. I told them I would do anything. The staff replied that they were simply enforcing the law. If I did not comply, the consequences would be mine to bear.

In isolated and helpless despair — with no one to help me, no one to call, no recourse of any kind — I was forced to undergo the abortion surgery. Afterward, without my full and voluntary consent, personnel inserted an intrauterine device (IUD) into my body as an enforcement measure. I had no say in this either. I was crying when they did it. I do not believe they noticed.

I do not have adequate words to describe what I felt leaving that hospital. The self-blame that set in afterward was overwhelming and lasted for years. I could not step out of the shadow of that day for a very long time.

In September 2015, I became pregnant again unexpectedly. My feelings were impossible to describe — joy and terror at the same time. I knew what had happened before. I knew what the policy said. But I also knew what I felt when I thought about giving my son a sibling. I could not simply let go of that hope.

After much hesitation, when I was approximately four months along, I finally went to the hospital for a prenatal checkup. The fetus was completely healthy and developing normally. For a brief moment I felt something close to relief. The doctor then looked up and told me, plainly and without apology, that I was again in violation of the national family planning policy. He demanded that I terminate the pregnancy immediately. I refused without hesitation and quickly left the hospital. I went home. I made up my mind: I would protect this child. I did not care what it cost me.

A few days later, family planning staff came directly to my door. There were multiple of them. They did not wait for me to speak. They informed me I was coming with them. I refused again. They took me anyway.

At the hospital, I wept. I pleaded with everyone who would meet my eyes. I asked the nurses. I asked the doctors. I told them the baby was healthy. I told them I wanted this child. Not one person intervened. Despite my weeping, my pleading, my begging — it was impossible to change the outcome. The surgery was performed. At that time, the fetus was already fully formed.

I do not know how to explain to someone who has not experienced it what it means to have a second child taken from your body against your will, after you have already lost one the same way. The surgery inflicted a massive and devastating blow to my physical and mental well-being. I am still carrying that weight today.

Having undergone two forced abortions stripped me of my right to be a mother again and severely damaged my health and my family. Under the drastic hormonal changes that followed, my personality underwent what I can only describe as an earth-shattering transformation. I became emotionally withdrawn, unstable, and unrecognizable — even to myself. My husband said I had become a different person. He was right.

My relationship with my husband deteriorated steadily. We could not maintain even a basic life together as a couple. The intimacy between us was gone. The warmth was gone. The family environment grew colder each month until it reached a freezing point. We finally divorced in August 2018.

After the divorce, I raised my son entirely on my own. My former husband formed a new family and never once provided any form of care or financial support. I have been responsible for everything — school, medical care, daily life, emotional support — completely alone, while managing the weight of what had been done to me.

I want to be clear about one thing: I was never able to seek legal remedy or protection within China for what was done to me. The people who took me to that hospital and performed those procedures were acting on behalf of the Chinese government. They were enforcing state policy. There is no court in China, no police station, no government office where I could have gone and expected anything other than silence or punishment. The state was both the perpetrator and the authority. I had nowhere to turn.

With the help of my family, I tried to rebuild my life. I returned to work. I focused on my son. I tried to carry the grief and continue forward. I had obtained a United States visa in July 2019, but due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, I was unable to travel until October 2023.

During that visit, I felt something I had not felt in years. People here speak freely. The right to decide whether or not to have children is treated as a fundamental human right. These formed a sharp and painful contrast with everything I had lived through. I want to be honest about why I did not apply for asylum at that time. I was not ready. I did not know that what had been done to me could form the basis of a legal claim. I was not in a place, emotionally or psychologically, where I could confront that narrative and ask a foreign government to protect me from my own country. I returned to China.

In October 2024, I applied for a long leave of absence and returned to Los Angeles. I had originally planned to visit a close friend and then travel to Boston. But in Los Angeles, I met a group of people who had gone through experiences similar to mine. We shared our stories. For the first time, I felt that what had happened to me was not only my private shame — it was something others had also been forced to carry. In early December 2024, I returned to China.

Back in China, the workplace environment was suffocating. I was perpetually assigned meaningless work, required to socialize on terms not my own, and unable to refuse even the most unreasonable demands. There was no freedom of expression anywhere. After experiencing life in the United States, the contrast was unbearable.

I began writing online. I posted on WeChat and other platforms, expressing my views about China’s lack of democracy, its absence of basic human rights, its censorship, and its treatment of ordinary citizens. I wrote about the experiences that had shaped my life. I wrote because I had spent years being silenced and I could no longer continue to be silent.

Government officials came directly to my home. There were two of them. They stood in my living room and told me what I had been posting online. They informed me that my speech was causing serious harm and that if I continued to transmit such views, I would face severe punishment. They were calm when they said it, which made it more frightening, not less.

That kind of warning was all too familiar to me. The moment they spoke, everything came back — the hospital, the cold voice of the staff member, the feeling of having no power over what happened to my own body. The scenes of past miseries pushed me instantly into an abyss of despair. I knew, deep in my core, that if I continued to resist, the consequences would be irreversible. For a single mother raising a son alone, this was a genuinely terrifying moment. I was terrified.

In July 2025, I brought my son with me to Hawaii, where we spent time together and I allowed myself to breathe for the first time in months. Afterward, we came to Los Angeles. My son and I both experienced what it means to live without that constant underlying fear. We reunited with the friends I had met the year before. That experience confirmed for me, more deeply than ever, that only in a place where human rights and freedoms are truly protected can my son and I build a safe and dignified life.

I did not come to the United States to take anything from anyone. I came because the country of my birth took things from me that cannot be given back — two pregnancies, my marriage, years of my health and stability — and then warned me that if I spoke about it, the consequences would be severe. I came because I am a mother, and I refuse to raise my son in a country where the government can decide what happens to a woman’s body and what words she is allowed to say.

I beg the Honorable Immigration Judge to understand the full weight of what I have described. I have suffered double persecution in China — both physically and mentally — at the hands of state policy. I have been threatened for speaking the truth about my own experiences. I have been silenced, violated, and warned. This is not simply an unjust society. It is one that has personally, repeatedly, and deliberately harmed me.

If I am returned to China, I will return to the same hospitals, the same officials, the same government that violated my body twice and has already warned me that further resistance will bring irreversible punishment. My son will return to a country that has shown it does not respect the rights of people like his mother.

I earnestly apply for asylum in the United States. I ask for the protection of this government — not because I am weak, but because I have exhausted every other option. I ask for the right to raise my son in freedom and safety. I ask for the right to speak without fear. I ask for the right to live in a country that treats a woman’s body as her own.

Thank you for reading my statement in full.