S1E1 Decree 770: Interruption of Pregnancy is Prohibited

Episode Transcript

R. QUINN BRACKEN: Hi and welcome to We Should Have Learned. I’m your host Quinn Bracken.

LAUREN GAWTHROP: And I’m your host Lauren Gawthrop. This season we are talking about Romania’s Decree 770.

QUINN: Step back in time with me. You are Sabina. You’re 22 years old in 1966 and the nightlife in Romania is on the rise. You’ve recently discovered the up-and-coming music genre, rock ‘n roll, which is popular in the West, and you’re at a concert of the band Phoenix.

LAUREN: “Wait, Phoenix?”

QUINN: “Not that Phoenix. This Phoenix is Romanian born and raised. They actually started out as Sfintii, which is the Romanian word for The Saints, but under that name they were accused of being religious propaganda, so they were reborn as Phoenix.”

QUINN: Phoenix is playing at a local union’s club called “Lola,” and this is the first time you’ve ever experienced something like this. Your heart is beating hard as you dance to the rhythm of the music. You’re slightly out of breath, but you laugh because in this moment you feel joyful and alive.

QUINN: Romanian customs were changing at this point in time. There had been a significant shift away from farming as a way of life and many Romanians relocated into centralized towns and cities and worked in factories and other manufacturing facilities. This started after World War II and continued throughout the middle of the century. As the cities grew, people left behind the traditions of smaller living and the mainstream culture evolved into something more modern.

QUINN: The song ends, and you look up. A tall, handsome guy across the room has been watching you. He smiles. Your heart flutters. You can’t help but smile back. He crosses the room and introduces himself as Dorian. His bright eyes have a captivating energy, and part of you can’t believe he’s chosen to talk to you. At the end of the night, you go home with the friend you came with, but before you do, you let Dorian know how he can find you.

When you wake up the next morning, you turn on the television. Romania’s leader, Nicolae Ceausescu is in the news. He has brought forth a new law in an effort to revitalize the slumping population of Romania.

QUINN: Ceausescu’s rise to power started, of all places, in prison.

LAUREN: Ah, yes, prison: where we make the best leaders.

QUINN: Beginning when he was just sixteen years old, he spent many years in and out of prison for political crimes centering around his support for communism. His ID card even officially labeled him a “dangerous communist agitator.”

QUINN: Years later, the communist party had taken power and Ceausescu had risen into a role organizing its leadership. He had positioned a lot of his fans among the ranks. As the longtime Romanian leader, Gheorghiu-Dej, lay dying from cancer in the other room, communist heavyweights decided Ceausescu would be the best man for the job; someone with a lot of support behind him. They feared that if there were any time between Gheorghiu-Dej’s death and the election of a new leader, Russia would use that as an opportunity to seize power in Romania. So, Ceausescu continued his ascent.

QUINN: This new law, Decree 770, has outlawed pregnancy interruption throughout Romania. Banning abortion at this point in time will change everything. Contraceptives have been hard to afford and even harder to find, so accidental pregnancy happens quite often. Abortion is the only reliable and accessible option that women and families have to maintain control over their lives. It’s not a good option, but it’s all they’ve got.

QUINN: Abortion was used as fertility control in Romania up to this point. Immediately before the 1966 decree, the abortion rate sat at about 80% of conceived pregnancies. Living in the US, we might find it difficult to understand this approach, because something we are privileged to have in a lot of places in the US is access. For now, anyway. We have better access to both sex education and contraception, neither of which were prevalent in Romania in the 60s. 

There were wide swaths of society who didn’t know how to effectively prevent pregnancy; and for those that did know how, they didn’t have access to contraceptive devices. It was hard to import contraceptives into Eastern Europe, which made them scarce and expensive. And most contraceptives require consistency for them to be fully effective, like oral contraceptives you have to take everyday or condoms you have to use every time you have sex for them to be effective. If something is scarce and expensive, it’s unlikely to be a consistent part of your routine.

QUINN: And, just for context, traditionally, the pullout method was the most common method of birth control for Romanians.

QUINN: Another significant reason abortion was used more often than contraception in Romania during the late 50s and early 60s was because of tradition and perception. There were broadly believed myths that were more than likely spread to discourage contraceptive use for the sake of population growth that oral contraception had some seriously harmful side effects. Doctors also made more money and received more gifts from performing abortions than they did from administering contraception, so they were more inclined to encourage their patients towards abortion. Doctors were likely perpetuating some of the aforementioned myths about contraceptives, but they also promoted the idea that abortion was a way to cleanse the body.

LAUREN: So doctors would get gifts for performing abortions?

QUINN: Yeah, because patients were grateful.

LAUREN: Interesting, okay.

QUINN: And looking at the past 10 years in the US, we know how much everyone will buy into a good cleanse.

QUINN: Abortion access in mid-century Romania gave people control over their lives. Women were able to put off pregnancy until they were settled and ready, and families were able to limit their number of children so they could take good care of the ones they already had. This put the crude birth rate in 1965 at 14.5, which was low.

LAUREN: Wait, what’s a “crude” birth rate?

QUINN: Crude birth rate is a measurement of the number of births per 1,000 people. So a crude birth rate of 14.5 means there are about 15 babies born for every 1,000 people in the population. With that crude birth rate, if a country had a total population of 2,000 people, you could expect 30 babies to be born in a year. And for context, the crude birth rate in the US for the same year was 19.4.

LAUREN: Okay, so definitely low.

QUINN: Yes.

QUINN: Romania was in a population slump, and Ceausescu believed that the lower population would mean fewer workers, lower production, and in-turn, lower economic gain. Decree 770 was a way for him to reverse the population decline and move his country towards prosperity.

Part of Ceausescu’s goal in implementing Decree 770 was to create a “New Man.” This was a propaganda idea to encourage the coming generation of people to be better than the generations before so that they could build a stronger society on tenets like achievement and success. He wanted to see the population of Romania grow to over twenty million people, and for those people to revolutionize Romanian society. He wanted Romania to join the ranks of other political and economic powerhouses in the global arena.

QUINN: Back to Sabina. The phone rings. You answer it.

SABINA (LAUREN): “Ionescu residence, this is Sabina.”

QUINN: It’s Dorian. He wants to take you out to dinner this Saturday night. You accept. You exchange pleasantries and hang up the phone. You catch yourself smiling again. There are butterflies in your chest from the excitement over his infatuation with you.

QUINN:The week drags on. Saturday cannot get here fast enough. You go to your job at Victoria Shoes and Plastics Factory day in and day out, but now you finally have something exciting to look forward to. While you’re at work, though, you hear the other girls talk about that new law, Decree 770.

Ecaterina, whom you sew with, has a sister who went to the doctor and tried to get an abortion, but was denied. The doctor told her that under the new law, she doesn’t qualify for an abortion. He told her that she is young and fertile, and she should do her civic duty to bring new Romanians into the world. 

QUINN: The first article of Decree 770 states: “Interruption of pregnancy is prohibited.” Full stop. The next article goes on to outline the situations in which an abortion may be permitted. These include: the life of the woman is at risk, the woman has a severe disability, there is risk of passing on a serious genetic condition, the woman is over 45 years old, the woman has given birth to and is caring for four children already, or the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.

LAUREN: This is all sounding very familiar.

QUINN: Right?

QUINN: These sound like pretty clear exceptions on paper, and you would hope that doctors could use their best judgement about things, but in practice, medical professionals found they were not allowed to act without permission from Ceausescu’s secret police. Doctors could be in emergency medical situations with pregnant patients and be forced to wait for the go ahead to treat them from someone who didn’t know their head from their ass when it came to medical decisions.

QUINN: Ecaterina says her sister wants to try to do an abortion at home by uterine sounding. 

SABINA (LAUREN): “What’s uterine sounding?” you ask.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “It’s where you stick something in the uterus to disrupt the pregnancy,” she tells you.

QUINN: She asks if you would come over to help. You tell her you don’t know anything about it, and you don’t think you would be of use. Ecaterina tells you “It will be easy. It’s in and out. But we need someone to hold her down and keep her quiet in case she makes noise.”

SABINA (LAUREN): “How do you know all this?” You ask.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “I had an abortion last year,” she tells you.

QUINN: Abortion in Romania wasn’t a taboo the way that it tends to be in Western society today. With 80% of conceptions ending in abortion, it’s clear to see it’s something many women had experienced. Religious women also saw abortions as “God’s will” for some babies to not be born. Others believed abortion was a sin, but that they could redeem themselves through acts like Godparenting other children. 

QUINN: That evening, you go home with Ecaterina. You meet her sister, Florentina. On the kitchen table sits a torch, two towels, a turkey baster, a bottle of lemon juice, and a coat hanger. A tea kettle boils on the stove.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “Give me a few minutes to clean myself up,” Ecaterina tells her sister.

QUINN: Florentina nods and sits at the table. The air in the house is thick with tension. You step outside and sit on the concrete step.

QUINN: At this point, it was definitely not unheard of for women to self-manage abortions; in fact, women have been self-managing abortions in a variety of ways throughout history. But Decree 770 took any promise of abortion as a safe medical procedure away from Romanian women.

QUINN: Ecaterina opens the door.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “We’re ready,” she tells you.

QUINN: The three of you gather around the kitchen table.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “Lay down,” Ecaterina instructs Florentina.

QUINN: Florentina climbs up on top of the table and lays flat. Ecaterina looks at you.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “Stay up there by her head. Make sure she doesn’t move too much. Don’t let her scream.”

QUINN: You do as you’re told. You watch as Ecaterina pushes Florentina’s legs apart and shines the torch to see. She has unfolded the coat hanger into a straight rod. She dips the end of the coat hanger into the boiling water in the kettle and holds it there for a few moments. She moves around between Florentina’s legs, and as she moves the coat hanger, Florentina’s shoulders stiffen. You push her hair across her forehead to comfort her. She closes her eyes tight and winces.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “Hold her still,” Ecaterina instructs.

QUINN: You apply pressure to Florentina’s shoulders. She is shaking from the pain. Ecaterina moves the coat hanger. Florentina screams.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “You have to keep her quiet,” Ecaterina asserts.

QUINN: She fills the turkey baster with lemon juice. You try again to soothe Florentina, but she writhes and screams in pain.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “Cover her mouth,” Ecaterina says.

QUINN: You grab a towel and press it between Florentina’s teeth.

SABINA (LAUREN): “Bite down,” you tell her.

QUINN: She bites. She cries through the towel. The sound is muffled and much quieter.

QUINN: Ecaterina backs away from her sister and rests the coat hanger in the boiling water. She wipes her hands with a towel.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “It is finished,” she says to no one in particular.

QUINN: Together, the two of you help Florentina to her bed. You spend a moment brushing her hair with your fingers as she sniffles through tears. No one should have to go through what she just went through.

QUINN: Women were subjected to inhumane treatment under Decree 770. They were denied medical care and forced to reproduce in the name of the Romanian government’s quest for power. This sort of state control over people’s bodies is termed “biopolitics.” There were other Decrees passed at the time to coerce people into structuring their families in certain ways, like legal limitations on divorce, child-bearing incentives, and a celibacy tax. Ceausescu was even quoted as saying “The fetus is the socialist property of the whole society. Giving birth is a patriotic duty. Those who refuse to have children are deserters, escaping the law of natural continuity.”

LAUREN: That’s pretty intense.

QUINN: I, just, I don’t even have words

LAUREN: I don’t know what to do, yeah. Yeah, well.

QUINN: The next day you ask Ecaterina how her sister is doing.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “She’s improving,” she tells you.

QUINN: What you witnessed has shaken you. You can’t believe doctors wouldn’t help Florentina and that she was forced to do the procedure at home. Over the course of the week, Ecaterina grows more visibly exhausted. You don’t want to push, but you again ask how Florentina is doing.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “She’s growing sicker,” Ecaterina tells you. “She has a fever, she won’t eat, she hasn’t been able to get out of bed.”

QUINN: She tells you she’s not sure what to do. She’s afraid if she takes her to the hospital that they will start asking questions.

QUINN: Decree 770 cemented the understanding that Ceausescu and the Romanian government saw women as valuable only because of their fertility. Their humanity and their autonomy were meaningless under the biopolitical expectation for them to supply the country with citizens. Without alternatives, many women had babies that they wouldn’t have had if Decree 770 hadn’t been in place.

Under this new legal structure, women were intended to shoulder even more of the burden of growing Romanian society because they were expected to work at the same time that they were expected to provide the country with at least four new citizens. Ceausescu’s ideal family model looked like a working father, a working mother, and four children. Home responsibilities, childcare, child production, and economic growth all fell on women.

LAUREN: I barely know any families that have four kids, just because of how hard it is to have one.

QUINN: Right, exactly. And even, like, a working parent with one child… it’s still such a struggle.

LAUREN: You’re basically dooming these people to poverty and strife for their whole life.

QUINN: Yes, exactly.

QUINN: Thursday morning, Ecaterina is absent from work. This has you worried, so when she returns on Friday morning you corner her immediately.

SABINA (LAUREN):“What happened?” you ask.

QUINN: Ecaterina’s eyes are red and wet.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “Florentina died,” she tells you.

QUINN: She ushers you to work like normal to prevent drawing attention. You start working, but you glance over your shoulder to let Ecaterina know you’re listening.

ECATERINA (QUINN): “I took her to the hospital and they pressured her to tell them who did it to her,” she tells you. “She looked green. She was so sick, but they wouldn’t treat her unless she talked. They let her die.”

QUINN: It sounds like she is crying. Both of you keep sewing.

QUINN: Saturday comes, and Dorian picks you up for your date together. He takes you to The Palace Restaurant and orders you the pan-fried steak and peppers. He is funny and flattering and it is nice to have a reason to smile. After dinner, he parks near an isolated stretch of the Bega River to watch the sunset. He leans in to kiss you. You can’t get the image of Florentina out of your mind, considering what led her to that situation. He puts his hand on your waist and rubs his thumb against you.

SABINA (LAUREN): “We have to be careful,” you tell him.

DORIAN (QUINN): “It will be fine,” he says.

QUINN: He moves closer and kisses you again. You pull back.

DORIAN (QUINN): “What are you afraid of?” he asks.

SABINA (LAUREN): “I don’t want to risk getting pregnant,” you tell him.

DORIAN (QUINN): “Whatever happens, we will take care of it,” he says.

QUINN: He leans in again, but you put your hand on his chest. You are surprised at his persistence, but consider that he doesn’t likely understand the potential consequences in the same way that you do. He is visibly annoyed at your resolve.

DORIAN (QUINN): “Fine, I’ll take you home,” he says.

QUINN: With reluctance, he drops you off at your front door. He is brusk and cold, and you worry you will not hear from him again.

QUINN: Just one year after Decree 770 was signed into law, the crude birth rate doubled. Many women accepted the fact that they were forced to give birth outside their means, and the population skyrocketed. There was a sharp increase in the Romanian population in the following few years.

LAUREN: So I guess at the very least he was successful?

QUINN: Sure, yeah.

LAUREN: Okay.

QUINN: Many other women opted for illegal abortions performed by any provider they could find, and as a result typically found themselves in unsafe conditions. Sometimes women even performed the procedures on themselves. Women pursued illegal abortions out of desperation… they felt they had no other options. Their government failed them, their medical system failed them, and they had to take matters into their own hands.

LAUREN: This is the case throughout history. If women aren’t given safe access, they will find unsafe access and make it happen.

QUINN: It absolutely is. 

QUINN: Enough women found alternative solutions to the problem that was Decree 770 by either preventing or ending pregnancies that by 1969, the crude birth rate started to fall again. The decline was slow at first, but in 1973 the fall of the crude birth rate was so significant that Ceausescu further tightened the reins on the Romanian people.

I want to note here that, up to now, we’ve largely been talking about white Romanian women and how they were pressured to bear and raise a new generation of Romanians. White women were the majority in Romania, so the documented history largely represents the experiences of white women. Consequently, it can be easy to overlook that there were other ethnic groups that had completely different experiences under Decree 770. Romani women, for example, were granted abortion upon request, even if they didn’t meet the age or health requirements for an exception under Decree 770. Ceausescu’s idea of a “New Man” did not include Romani people, so they were not encouraged or expected to grow the population the way that white women were.

LAUREN: Wow. That is exceptionally racist.

QUINN: The Ministry of Health in Romania had been blaming women for the population decline for some time now, claiming that women’s independence and education resulted in lower birth rates. Now they had seen the reality that when you force women to bear children against their will, the population will increase. They had evidence to believe they had been right all along.

LAUREN: Give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a mile. Oh gosh.

QUINN: The Romanian government had seen population growth with the implementation of Decree 770, so to now see those numbers decline was a disruption in Ceausescu’s plan for the country to gain power. He was motivated to stop whatever control women had taken back over the past few years and push them into the boundless reproduction they had provided in 1967 and 1968.

LAUREN: Back to baby-making machines, please.

QUINN: You are sewing on the floor at Victoria Shoes and Plastics Factory when the foreman approaches your table.

FOREMAN (QUINN): “You four,” he says, indicating you, Ecaterina, and the two other women in the row of machines. “Come with me,” he instructs.

QUINN: You stop what you’re doing and follow him. The smell of sweat clings to his brown suit jacket and wafts down the hallway. He ushers the four of you into a back room. There is a nurse in a stiff white dress waiting for you.

NURSE (QUINN): “Take your clothes off,” she instructs. 

QUINN: You look to Ecaterina with confusion and concern on your face. She shrugs subtly.

NURSE (QUINN): “Come on, we don’t have all day,” the nurse instructs.

QUINN: You take your clothes off and hold them in front of you. The other girls do the same. The nurse opens the door and beckons someone in. A man with glasses and a white lab coat steps through the door.

NURSE (QUINN): “Up on the table,” the nurse instructs.

QUINN: You hesitate.

NURSE (QUINN): “Up. Now,” she insists.

QUINN: You climb up on the table and lay on your back at her instruction. You hold your clothes over your body. The room is freezing. The doctor approaches the table and pushes your legs apart. You try to clench them together but he pushes back. He pushes his gloved fingers inside you. The friction of it burns. He uses his other hand to push on your abdomen. He feels around, then removes his hands and tells you to get down. You’re shaking as you step back into your clothes. You don’t know it now, but this will become a monthly occurrence.

LAUREN: Monthly?

QUINN: Monthly.

LAUREN: I have to psych myself up to get an annual exam, and I’m expecting and asking for it. This is ridiculous.

QUINN: At this point, Ceausescu encouraged the Securitate to be a larger presence in monitoring women for pregnancies. The government tasked men in positions of power with the responsibility of keeping the women around them under surveillance for signs of pregnancy, and reporting if they found women to be pregnant. Doctors were sent into women’s workplaces to do routine checks for pregnancies, which meant women were regularly subjected to government-sanctioned medical abuse.

Women couldn’t run when they were at work; otherwise they risked their jobs, or worse being, handed over to the secret police. So work was the perfect place to funnel them into forced gynecological exams. Doctors would pull women off the floors of factories, make them strip naked, and perform pelvic exams in search of enlarged uteruses. They questioned women about their last periods. They performed urine pregnancy tests, and when they ran out of manufactured pregnancy tests they injected women’s urine into frogs. 

LAUREN: Frogs? What?

QUINN: Yeah, frogs. Frogs, because the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG, is only detected in the body when a person is pregnant, and human chorionic gonadotropin causes frogs to have a visible reaction when it is injected into a certain part of their bodies.

LAUREN: How did they figure this out?

QUINN: I have no idea.

QUINN: Doctors would then report their findings to the authorities, and if any women were found to be pregnant, they were monitored until they gave birth. The government was absolutely desperate to maintain control over women, and they were clearly willing to go to extreme measures to do so.

These changes caused another increase in the Romanian crude birth rate, but by this point, Romanian society had taken a hit. The quality of life was low. The Maternal Mortality Rate climbed. Food was scarce. Decree 770 put strain on the Romanian economy, and the Romanian people were having a hard time prospering. But wasn’t prosperity the point of all of this to begin with?

That’s where we’ll end things today. When we pick up next time, we’ll hear about what it was like to be a child born under Decree 770.

QUINN: This has been We Should Have Learned. Resources for this episode include The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceausescu by John Sweeny, Economy, Society and Culture in Contemporary Romania by John W. Cole, Children of the Decree directed by Florin Iepan, and more. The full list of resources is available on our website, weshouldhavelearnedpod.com. 

Though Sabina and her story are a fictional dramatization based on historical research, the events of Decree 770 and Nicolae Ceausescu's reign are a true part of Romanian history.

We Should Have Learned was produced, researched, and written by R. Quinn Bracken. Episodes were engineered and mixed by Ryan Deatherage, and hosted by Lauren Gawthrop and R. Quinn Bracken. Music was written and performed by Ryan Deatherage.

If you like this podcast, consider leaving us a five star review and sharing it with a friend. Thanks for listening.

No part of this production may be used or reproduced in any way to train artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

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