China announced Thursday that it was ending a governmental policy in which families could legally have only one child, adding it was now upping that number to two.
The policy, in force for the past three decades, was implemented in a bid to curb the country's overpopulation.
The policy was first eased in mid-2014, when authorities allowed families whose spouses were only children to have two offspring if they chose to. Now that policy has been expanded to all Chinese families.
In its early years, the policy was brutally enforced by Chinese authorities, with violators sentenced to harsh jail terms for “harming the public welfare.”
In addition, rumors abounded that parents who were limited to one child would abandon female babies, preferring to have a boy, if they could only have one.
