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What We Can Learn From Romania’s Complete Abortion Ban
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| Contributor | Jason |
| Last Edited | Jason May 08, 2022 06:10pm |
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| Category | Perspective |
| Author | Ilana Gordon |
| News Date | Thursday, March 9, 2017 12:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | OnJan. 21, the women marched. On Jan. 22, President Trump retaliated by effectively crippling women’s rights to reproductive health care across the globe. It was a demoralizing end to the largest inaugural protest in American history.
Here in the US, the future of women’s reproductive rights is dire. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to defund Planned Parenthood. More recently, the White House issued an ultimatum to the health care provider: Stop offering abortions or lose all government funding. (NB: Federal funding currently does not pay for abortion services at Planned Parenthood.)
Trump is playing a dangerous game, and his actions will affect the lives of millions of real people. Romania once gambled on women’s health, too. Trump might be interested to learn how that turned out for them.
Romanian abortion policies in the 60s
It might surprise you to learn that in 1957, Eastern European countries enjoyed some of the most liberal abortion laws ever recorded. Romania’s high abortion rates were not a nod to progressivism, but rather a lack of resources — women in the country had almost no access to contraceptives. By the mid 1960s, Romania’s abortion rate rose to over 1.1 million abortions annually (at a time when the country’s population was about 18 million). The average Romanian woman could expect to undergo 3.9 abortions over the course of her lifetime.
The Romanian people elected communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu in 1965. Concerned about the country’s shrinking population, Ceausescu enacted Decree 770, which essentially outlawed abortion entirely, with only a few exceptions: |
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