QIAN'AN, China–The stars seemed to be in alignment for Jin Yani in the summer of 2000.

She had just married. Her partner, Yang Zhongchen, was a loving husband with a good income. And the couple were looking forward to the birth of their first child – a girl, an ultrasound confirmed. They would name her Yang Yin, they decided.

For a young woman from a broken family, Jin couldn't believe her good luck. But one evening, a knock came to the door – and all of that shattered in an instant.

Ten local family planning officials burst into her home, dragged her off and subjected Jin to a brutal, forced abortion.

She was in her ninth month.

Her crime? She had conceived her child five months before she and Yang were married, an illegal act in China.

The events that occurred seven years ago this week constitute a nightmare from which Jin has never recovered, although she and Yang have struggled for justice every day.

Now, justice might be coming. Forced abortions are against the law in China. And a district court has agreed to hear the couple's appeal against a decision by a local court that absolved local family planning officials of all wrongdoing.

Jin and Yang are seeking about $185,000 from Hebei province's Changli County in compensation for damages in a procedure that left Jin unable ever to bear children

"This is a first," says Beijing lawyer Sun Maohang, who represents the couple. "No court in China has ever agreed to hear an appeal on a charge against officials involving a forced abortion."

While cautious, Sun says a legal victory would represent a "breakthrough" in Chinese law.

Further, it would likely trigger countless other Chinese to come forward with similar suits.

Forced abortions continue to be a grim reality in China, with some local officials prepared to use extraordinary measures to meet low birth targets set under China's one-child only policy. But Jin is realistic about the healing powers of a potential court victory.

"They can't really compensate for all that we have suffered," she says, during an interview on the poor side of Qian'an, a prosperous iron ore mining centre, 300 kilometres east of Beijing.

"Our baby will never come back ... we just hope this kind of thing will never happen again."

Nor will a "breakthrough" ever erase Jin's dark memories.

"It was about seven in the evening, just after dinner," says Jin, a slight woman a hair over five feet tall. "My mother-in-law and I were preparing to lie down and have a rest. Then, somebody knocked."

As her mother-in law opened the door, the 10 officials burst in shouting, "Pack up! Follow us!"

One official yelled at her: "Who said you could have this baby?"

"I was nine-months pregnant and my mother-in-law asked if we could wait until my husband returned. They wouldn't allow it."

Yang was working on a construction project in a town three hours away by train.

"I cried and cried and said I didn't want to go," Jin recalls. "But two men dragged me to a car and two women followed with my belongings. They wouldn't let my mother-in-law come."

Jin recognized two of the women.

They had come to her home just two days before to discuss details of the coming birth.

Given that Jin had conceived when she was 19, and before she and Yang were officially married, the pregnancy was technically outside of the law.

But the couple had wanted to make things right. Five months after conception, when Jin turned 20 and could legally marry, they wed and registered with the local county. Also under Chinese law, they had to obtain a licence to have their first child. Local officials said they could get one – if they paid a fine.

The couple agreed.

The women who came to her home two days earlier reassured her: The paperwork would be done. The birth would be made legal.

When Jin arrived at the local family planning clinic she was hustled inside where a doctor was summoned and she was "pushed and shoved" through a series of medical examinations, she says.

"I wanted to call my husband, but they wouldn't let me. They said they didn't have a phone."

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By then Jin was becoming frantic. She was crying, begging.

"I said, `I don't care how much I have to pay in fines. I'll pay them! I just want to have this baby!'

"They said, `We don't care how much you're willing to spend! You're not having it!'"

Officials tried to persuade her to sign papers approving the procedure. But she refused. A senior official at the clinic signed them.

Two men dragged Jin to another room. "Then several people wearing white came in and they put me on a bed and tore my clothes open and held my arms down and injected me," she says.

It was a needle larger than one used for blood samples, she recalls. They injected it into her belly.

She passed out.

When husband Yang Zhongchen arrived by train at 7 p.m. the next day, he was prevented from entering the clinic. He was only allowed to see his wife the following morning. By then, she was in sheer agony.

"I couldn't bear the pain," she says, breaking down and crying for the first time during the interview.

On that day, some 48 hours after the injection had killed her child, a team of sweating doctors and nurses using forceps had to forcibly extract the dead body from her womb. Jin lost blood, was traumatized and remained in hospital for 44 days.

"I couldn't move for a month," says Jin. "I was like a small kid. My husband had to carry me to the bathroom all the time. He also brought food."

And he paid for medicine.

"The people in the clinic said to me, `If you want medicine, you'll have to pay. No money, no medicine,'" Yang recalls.

Outraged, he set aside his job and set out on what would eventually become a seven-year campaign going to one government office after another trying to seek relief for his wife and himself.

His campaign was fruitless. Running out of both money and hope, Yang was finally referred to lawyer Sun who took the case without pay.

"Whether it (the abortion) was voluntary is the key point," says Sun. "The signature for the operation is the most powerful piece of evidence."

The local court did not force local officials to produce the document.

Sun is hoping the more powerful higher court will. So is Jin.

"We're hoping for a satisfactory resolution," she says, "for the sake of our baby ... for our own peace of mind."

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