Angry protests are taking place in China following a brutal forced abortion that saw a woman forcibly aborted at seven months of pregnancy on June 3 in Shanxi Province, China.

A report from the China-based human rights organization 64Tianwang indicates the woman, Feng Jianmei, was beaten and dragged into a vehicle by a group of family planning officials while her husband, Deng Jiyuan, was out working.

The officials asked for RMB 40,000 in fines from Feng Jianmei’s family and, when they did not receive the money, they forcibly aborted Feng at seven months, laying the body of her aborted baby next to her in the bed (pictured right). Feng is under medical treatment in Ankang City, Zhenpin County, Zengjia Town, Yupin village.

A U.S.-based human rights group, ChinaAid, informed LifeNews today that the forced abortion has triggered a chain of angry protests from around the world and its president, Bob Fu, says the family will be represented by an attorney who will press their case with typically unsympathetic Chinese officials.

“The famous young Christian lawyer Zhang Kai will represent the mother, Feng Jianmei,” Fu explained. “The case has focused worldwide attention on China’s one-child family planning policy and the violent government measures used to enforce it.”

Fu explained further: “Zhang Kai was one of the lawyers who handled the famous “My father is Li Gang” case and the Qian Yunhui case in Zhejiang province, two cases that shocked the nation. In the first, a hit-and-run driver trying to escape the scene after hitting two students in front of Hebei University shouted that his father was a high-level official in the belief that it would get him immunity. In the latter case, a village leader trying to protect local residents’ rights in a land dispute case was crushed to death under a truck, believed by many to be a murder. Zhang Kai also represented Christians in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last October in a religious persecution case.”

Zhang recently wrote about the forced abortion on his blog, saying, “The tragic Zhenping case violates the most basic conscience of mankind.”

“This week, I will personally go to investigate and offer legal assistance to the plaintiff. If I exhaust all possible options domestically to seek a legal remedy, if China’s legal remedies all fail to realize the most basic demands (of the plaintiff), I will seek the help of international human rights groups, the United Nations and other groups, regardless of the political risk,” he said.”

He continued: “I’ve already been in touch with the plaintiff. Out of basic humanitarian concern, I will travel in the next few days to Zhenping to offer legal assistance to the victims. I cannot accept that this kind of blatant murder in the land that we live in. To ignore it is, I think, to be no different than the murderer. This is a crime against humanity.”

Meanwhile, the New York Post indicates Chinese officials will “probe” the brutal abortion:

The government of Zhenping county, where the abortion took place, have since promised a “transparent probe” under a special committee, while national family planning officials said any perpetrators would be punished.

An official at the National Population and Family Planning Commission who declined to be named said the commission viewed the matter as “serious and important” and that the investigation was being handled at the “top level.”

ChinaAid has also been monitoring he case of Cao Ruyi, the five-month pregnant mother in Changsha, Hunan province, who faced the threat of a forced abortion. The group has been active in drawing Chinese and international attention to the case, leading to some recent positive developments.

Fu called the Shaanxi case of the killing of Feng Jianmei’s seven-month-old unborn child a shocking incident, adding, “We are convinced that the tragedy of this kind of human extermination happens daily in many different places. We are dedicated to the building of a Chinese society that respects life, love and justice.”

Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, who initially exposed the brutal forced abortion, said, “This is an outrage. No legitimate government would commit or tolerate such an act.”

“Those who are responsible should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity,” Littlejohn said. “WRWF calls on the United States government and the leaders of the free world to strongly condemn forced abortion and all coercive family planning in China.”

As LifeNews reported last week, the human rights group ChinaAid, which worked closely with Chen to help him leave China, learned that a 37-year-old woman, Cao Ruyi (pictured left), was dragged from her home and beaten on the morning of June 6 by more than a dozen Chinese family planning officials. The mother, pregnant with a five month old unborn child, was accused of violating China’s “one child” policy because she and her husband, Li Fu, already have a six-year-old daughter.

Cao Ruyi was allowed to return home on Sunday and added that the surveillance personnel from the local family planning office had also been called off. Fu said he “expressed their thanks to ChinaAid for exposing the violent manner in which the local family planning officials dragged his wife to the hospital and the threat of performing a forced abortion on her.”

“He said the domestic and international attention and concern that Fu’s publicity efforts elicited was the reason Ms. Cao was allowed to return home,” Fu added.

However, before her release from the hospital, Cao was forced to sign a guarantee that she will pay a 10,000 yuan (nearly US $1500) “pregnancy termination deposit fee,” which will not be returned if she insists on keeping her baby. Instead the deposit will serve as partial payment of her fine for giving birth to a baby without government permission. She will also be required to pay a “social burden compensation fee” of US $25,000.

“Nonetheless, this is a welcome change,” Fu said. “ChinaAid expresses its thanks for the timely prayers of many brothers and sisters and for the concern expressed by many in the international community, most notably U.S. congressman Chris Smith who contacted the Hunan provincial and Changsha municipal governments directly.”

“Some Chinese netizens have also traveled to Changsha to lodge a formal protest with the procuratorate about Ms. Cao’s illegal detention by local officials. Many house church Christians prayed for Ms. Cao’s unborn child and called the couple to encourage and express support for them,” Fu continued.