Chinese women turning to "twin drugs" to have more children

Many people would love to have twins, and some may even take measures specifically to increase their chances of giving birth to twins or higher order multiples. Chinese women are in a unique situation with the one-child policy in their country. Now they, too, have discovered the power of fertility drugs like Clomid. For Chinese couples, having twins can be the only chance to have more than one child, and apparently Clomid is giving them a helping hand.

There are no official statistics available about twin births in China, but doctors say that the number of twins has drastically increased in recent years. A doctor talking to a Chinese newspaper said he was "deeply concerned about the rapidly increasing birth rate of twins" and added that his hospital saw "a proportion of twins born beyond the laws of nature". This doctor, Zhang Xiao Mei, is the director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Subei Hospital in Jiangsu province. He may be more concerned about the political aspects of twin births than anything else, but he warned women about the possible side effects of fertility drugs such as Clomid: "These drugs should be taken under the strict supervision of a doctor because multi-fetal pregnancies come with the risk of early birth and miscarriage, and overdose of the drug could do harm to your reproductive organs."

It is true that ovulation-inducing drugs that increase twin rates have side effects, and that these drugs can be very risky too. That risk goes up when the drugs are not prescribed by a doctor, and may even be counterfeit drugs. But, with other recent news stories from China, like the tragic one about a woman who had a forced abortion at eight months, it is not really a surprise that some couples are opting to take extreme measures for the chance to have more than one child.