<p>This article examines China’s legal prohibition on single women’s nontraditional reproductive choices, including the use of egg freezing for fertility preservation and the pursuit of single motherhood through assisted reproductive technologies for social, rather than medical, reasons. It reveals both theoretical and practical dilemmas posed by such prohibitions. In theory, although China’s regulations are framed as protective, they fail to meet the criteria for justifiable hard paternalism. In practice, contradictions within China’s fertility policies have spurred reproductive tourism, enabling women with greater socioeconomic resources to circumvent domestic prohibitions and exacerbating inequality among single women—an outcome current regulations are insufficiently prepared to address. Drawing on comparative experiences from Japan and South Korea, this article proposes a more adaptive regulatory framework for governing single women’s reproductive demands. It argues that restructuring China’s current paternalistic approach would improve policy coherence and better fulfil the obligations to protect women’s reproductive rights under both domestic and international legal norms.</p>