Here's a brief examination of what the Radical Religious Right Christians
in America advocate for the world. Few of these Christians ever stop to
consider the consequences of their unfortunate beliefs regarding abortion.
Overplanned Parenthood: Ceausescu's cruel law
Karen Breslau, "Overplanned Parenthood: Ceausescu's cruel law",
Newsweek, Jan. 22, 1990, p. 35.
Nicolae Ceausescu loved nothing better than a monument to himself. But his
ministerial palaces and avenues paled next to another of his schemes for
building socialism: a plan to increase Romania's population from 23 million
to 30 million by the year 2000. He began his campaign in 1966 with a decree
that virtually made pregnancy a state policy. "The fetus is the property
of the entire society," Ceausescu proclaimed. "Anyone who avoids
having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national
continuity."
It was one of the late dictator's cruelest commands. At first Romania's
birthrate nearly doubled. But poor nutrition and inadequate prenatal care
endangered many pregnant women. The country's infant-mortality rate soard
to 83 deaths in every 1,000 births (against a Western European average of
less than 10 per thousand). About one in 10 babies was born underweight;
newborns weighing 1,500 grams (3 pounds, 5 ounces) were classified as
miscarriages and denied treatment. Unwanted survivors often ended up in
orphanages. "The law only forbade abortion," says Dr. Alexander
Floran Anca of Bucharest. "It did nothing to promote life."
Ceausescu made mockery of family planning. He forbade sex education. Books
on human sexuality and reproduction were classified as "state
secrets," to be used only as medical textbooks. With contraception
banned, Romanians had to smuggle in condoms and birth-control pills. Though
strictly illegal, abortions remained a widespread birth-control measure of
last resort. Nationwide, Western sources estimate, 60 percent of all
pregnancies ended in abortion or miscarriage.
The government's enforcement techniques were as bad as the law. Women under
the age of 45 were rounded up at their workplaces every one to three months
and taken to clinics, where they were examined for signs of pregnancy, often
in the presence of government agents -- dubbed the "menstrual
police" by some Romanians. A pregnant woman who failed to
"produce" a baby at the proper time could expect to be summoned
for questioning. Women who miscarried were suspected of arranging an abortion.
Some doctors resorted for forging statistics. "If a child died in our
district, we lost 10 to 25 percent of our salary," says Dr. Geta
Stanescu of Bucharest. "But it wasn't our fault: we had no medicine or
milk, and the families were poor."
Abortion was legal in some cases: if a woman was over 40, if she already had
four children, if her life was in danger -- or, in practice, if she had
Communist Party connections. Otherwise, illegal abortions cost from two to
four months' wages. If something went wrong, the legal consequences were
enough to deter many women from seeking timely medical help. "Usually
women were so terrified to come to the hospital that by the time we saw them
it was too late," says Dr. Anca. "Often they died at home."
No one knows how many women died from these back-alley abortions.
"Celibacy tax": A woman didn't have to be pregnant to come under
scrutiny. In 1986 members of the Communist youth group were sent to quiz
citizens about their sex lives. "How often do you have sexual
intercourse?" the questionnaire read. "Why have you failed to
conceive?" Women who did not have children, even if they could not,
paid a "celibacy tax" of up to 10 percent of their monthly salaries.
The rebels who overthrew Ceausescu last month quickly rescinded the policy.
"I would have killed Ceausescu for that law alone," says Maria
Dulce from her bed at Bucharest's Municipal Hospital. The 29-year-old
mother of two is recovering from a self-induced abortion. Here eyes are
bruised with fatigue. She is among a half dozen women in the dingy hospital
room. Dulce says she terminated her pregnancy because of the trauma
associated with caring for her second child, an 18-month-old boy. "We
had to buy milk on the black market," she says, "and we had to buy
a heater just for the baby's room." She had to have an emergency
hysterectomy only days before the uprising. "Now that it's possible for
a woman to be a woman again I'm mutilated," Dulce says through tears.
"And now there is a reason to have a child in this country."
---
Rev David Michael Rice
Shy David's House of Knowledge
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