I Had No Idea O-O - Blog Posts

Ceausescu’s children (Wendell Steavenson, The Guardian, Dec 10 2014)

“When he came to power in 1966, Ceaușescu had grand plans for Romania.

The country had industrialised late, after the second world war, and its birthrate was low.

Ceaușescu borrowed the 1930s Stalinist dogma that population growth would fuel economic growth and fused this idea with the conservatism of his rural childhood.

In the first year of his rule, his government issued Decree 770, which outlawed abortion for women under 40 with fewer than four children.

“The foetus is the property of the entire society,” Ceaușescu announced.

“Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.”

The birth rate soon doubled, but then the rate of increase slowed as Romanian women resorted to homemade illegal abortions, often with catastrophic results.

In 1977 all childless persons, regardless of sex or martial status, were made to pay an additional monthly tax.

In the 1980s condoms and the pill, although prohibitively expensive, began to become available in Romania – so they were banned altogether.

Motherhood became a state duty. The system was ruthlessly enforced by the secret police, the securitate.

Doctors who performed abortions were imprisoned, women were examined every three months in their workplaces for signs of pregnancy.

If they were found to be pregnant and didn’t subsequently give birth, they could face prosecution. Fertility had become an instrument of state control.

This policy, coupled with Romania’s poverty, meant that more and more unwanted children were abandoned to state care.

No one knows how many. Estimates for the number of children in orphanages in 1989 start at 100,000 and go up from there.”