Shaanxi Population and Family Planning Commission officials are probing allegations that authorities in Zengjia town forced a woman who was seven months pregnant to have an abortion almost two weeks ago.
The commission said in a statement on the province's official website that a team had been sent to Ankang , the city that oversees the township, to conduct an investigation.
A circular was also distributed to the populace emphasising that the legal rights of pregnant women should be upheld and that the 'abortion of late-term pregnancies' was prohibited.
The notice came after an outpouring of public anger over widely disseminated online postings this week that described how family-planning authorities in Zengjia abducted Feng Jianmei , 22, for three days and forcibly removed her baby on June 2 because it violated the nation's one-child policy.
She and her husband have a five-year-old girl.
The public was particularly angered upon seeing pictures taken by Feng's sister-in-law that showed the bloody corpse of the aborted baby girl alongside Feng, who looked overcome with exhaustion.
One internet user called it a brutal murder and compared it to the 'slaughter of children and women in Syria', and others called for a review of the nation's one-child policy, which has resulted in similar late-term abortions.