Romania & reporductive rights

[AValdoux]

Does anyone remember the horrible scenes from the orphanages in Romania? Wasn't there a ban on abortions & birth control in Romania at the time? Wasn't that the cause of all the unwanted children?

There was a woman on Ed Schultz who had ten foster children over the years. She asked who is going to take care of these children, who are born to women who would otherwise chose abortion. This made me think of the situation in Romania, when the communist government fell.


AValdoux

[zalinda]

1. It was more than that

woman were required to have children. They had them and then dumped them in the orphanages.

zalinda

[napi21]

2. I think this excuse is the worst reason for arguing for Abortion rights.

Basicly what you're saying is to use abortion as a method of birth control! That's just wrong.

To argue for a women's right to chose and that the Gov't has no right to even be involved is good, and accepted by the majority of Americans.

Everyone has their own opinion of what circumstances abortion should be allowed, from anytime with no restrictions to never, but to use it as a method of birth control is not accepted by anyone that I've ever heard.

[AValdoux]

3. I agree that abortion is not birth control

But my question was more along the lines of what happens with extreme controls on women's reproductive rights. The specifics on the romaninan regulations was more my question. I think an examination of what happens when certain rights are taken away, like birth control or abortion, is important. What are the effects on society?

Abortion is a very personal issue & government has no place in it.


AValdoux

[Iris]

4. I didn't see anything in the original post that suggests AValdoux was

suggesting abortion as birth control.

[bloom]

5. From 1966- 1990

It sounds like far too many of those children have been "trafficked"...

"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."...

"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."

http://www.holysmoke.org/fem/fem0052.htm

In the 90's was when Human Trafficking became more of a problem - esp. out of countries like Romania - with these same children who had been forced conceptions:

"The vast majority of women trafficked to Israel for sex come from Romania and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Seduced by agents of organized crime, they agree to be smuggled into Israel, hoping to make good money. The women are usually young girls, like "Anna" (her real name has been suppressed) a 23-year-old Romanian who testified about her experience to an Israeli court in 2002....

http://www.israelnewsagency.com/sexisrael69690531.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=341x4986

Also:

"...The documentary exposed how Western pedophiles were coming to Romania posing as tourists, and were then procuring boys for underage sex. “Tom,” from Britain, had originally come to Bucharest in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ceausescu regime to work in an orphanage. Using hidden cameras, Tom was shown discussing his Internet business—a web site offering to introduce men to Romanian boys. His clients came from throughout western Europe—Britain, Holland, Switzerland. He boasted that he had even supplied boys to a German judge.

From Bucharest, Tipurita travelled to Milan. In one district of Italy’s most prosperous city, the film showed how Romanian boys, some as young as 10, were being pimped for underage sex, often by their own fathers, brothers and cousins.

Posing as a potential customer, and using a secret night-vision camera, Tipurita asked one young boy how much it would cost for one hour. He said he would have to ask his father. Thirty euros ($35), came the reply. Suddenly, a police car drove by, but they were only interested in looking for “illegal immigrants,” Tipurita commented.

International federation Terre des Hommes estimates that 6,000 children between the ages of 12 and 16 are trafficked from eastern Europe each year, with more than 650 being forced to work as sex slaves in Italy. The price of a girl trafficked to Italy can be between $2,500 and $4,000, with up to $10,000 being paid if she is a virgin. According to the French human rights organisation, Albania is the county most involved in the sex trade, with women and children being lured to go to the West with false promises of marriage, jobs or education. When they get there, there is no husband, no job and no education. Alone in a foreign land without any means of support, violence and coercion ensure they are soon earning money for their new “owners.” <more>

http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-tylor251003.htm

[bloom]

6. “Living conditions for the majority... have worsened since 1989.”

“We know that gangs offer children for sale dead or alive. We can only conclude that the missing children die or are killed for their organs.”

Thousands of eastern European children and teenagers are being reduced to commodities in a trade in human misery. They are bought and sold like chattels to satisfy perverted sexual appetites, to provide slave labour, or, worst of all, to be “harvested” for their organs and body parts so that the rich and their children can live at their expense....

The global increase in poverty is most evident in eastern Europe, rising from 1 million to 24 million people between 1987 and 1998—defined as those forced to live on less than $2 a day. The percentage of the population below the poverty line is 30 percent in Albania and over 44 percent in Romania, according to the CIA World Factbook.

The introduction of the “free market” into the former state-controlled economies in eastern and central Europe has had its most devastating impact on family life. Millions of breadwinners have lost their jobs, Western imports have forced out domestic production leading to rising prices, and welfare provisions have been gutted.

According to Terre des Hommes, “Living conditions for the majority of the approximately 150 million children in the East European states and the Soviet Union have worsened since 1989.”

http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-tylor251003.htm

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Yes, the transition out of Communism was really tough on children

I knew lots of people who traveled to the USSR during the Communist period, and they all commented on how well chlidren were cared for, both within the family and according to public policy, even if the adults had to do without. People who went to the USSR with their chlidren found that the children were fussed over, and they encountered Soviet citizens who said that they wished they could afford to have more than one child.

Within a year after the introduction of "shock therapy," we started to hear horror stories about children being abandoned by their alcoholic and/or unemployed parents and kept in bleak, understaffed orphanages.

It was madness to enforce economic shock therapy in a country where no one had run a business for seventy years. The economic and social devastation should have been predictable.

At one translators' conference, I talked to a translation agency owner who had been born in Russia and had come over here as a teenager as part of the Soviet Jewish emigration in the late 1970s. I asked her if she had ever been back, now that it was possible. Yes, she had been back once during the 1990s, but it was so depressing--things had deteriorated so much--that she had no desire ever to go again.

[AnnieBW]

8. They Stopped Adoptions From Romania

The Romanian government stopped allowing foreign adoptions because of the child sex trafficking. Which is a shame, because my grandfather on my father's side is from Romania, and my husband and I were considering adopting a Romanian orphan. We're looking at Russia, Ukraine, or Kazakstan now. Or Bulgaria.

[TomPaine77]

9. Adoptions From CIS

Be careful: a number of "orphans" from the FSU countries are kidnapped from hospitals with the connivance of hospital staff, then sold to foreigners. A crime ring of this sort was recently discovered in Lviv, Ukraine.