NEW YORK, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- A Chinese woman's lawyer says forcing her to have an intrauterine device isn't a routine medical procedure and a U.S. court is reconsidering her deportation.
Chinese immigrant Mei Fun Wong, 44, asked for permission to stay in the United States shortly after she arrived in 2000 and said the IUD was inserted against her will by Chinese authorities in 1991, making her life "unbearable," the New York Daily News reported.
But an immigration judge ordered Wong, who lives in Manhattan, and her son deported in 2002, and an immigration appeals panel backed the decision in 2008.
"You can't just say this is a routine medical procedure," said Wong's lawyer, Henry Hwang. "What is routine about going to a person's home, detaining them and not letting them go until they submit?"
Chinese women are required to get IUDs as part of the government's population control policy. Wong had it secretly removed by a private doctor, court records said.
When the government discovered it missing during a required exam, it allegedly detained her for three days until she allowed it to be reinserted, the report said.
Immigration judges said IUD insertion is a non-permanent medical procedure and is not the same as forced sterilization.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, based in New York, didn't disagree with that conclusion, but wanted a lower court to explain why China's policy doesn't amount to persecution.
