“Jigsaw Children"

2020 Chan, Grace. “Jigsaw Children.” Clarkesworld, no. 161 (February 2020). http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chan_02_20/

The story is set in Hong Kong, which had become a part of the People’s Republic in 2047, and mainland China between 2098 and 2126. The protagonist is one of the “jigsaw children,” children who had been created by gene splicing and the carried by a surrogate mother, with China setting an annual quota of babies. She has three mothers and two fathers (the surrogate mother doesn’t count), and all the children are raised in a Children’s Center until they are sixteen, with the girls having an implant that stops menstruation at thirteen and the boys a vasectomy at sixteen. Over the years of the story, conflict over the program grows. The female author was born in Malaysia and brought to Australia before her first birthday. She has a medical degree and is in training in psychiatry.