According to an article running today on the Guardian News and Media web site (guardian.co.uk), a Chinese court has sentenced a 36-year-old mother, Li Yingfang, to death for hiring a man to strangle her 9-year-old son so that she could have a baby with her new husband. Because she had this son from her previous marriage, it would have been very costly for her to have another baby due to China's one-child law that was introduced about thirty years ago. Couples who break the law and have more than one baby have to pay a financial penalty.
To add more to this twisted story, Li Yingfang's new husband also has a child from a previous marriage -- a daughter. Before Li Yingfang sought to kill her son, she first tried to have her stepdaughter killed, but the young girl resisted and escaped. Thus she decided to have her son killed and hired a man who strangled the boy and left his body by the side of a road.
Here's a link to the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/16/china-one-child-policy