This is the result of "forced pregnancy". This is the legacy of totalitarianism.
BUCHAREST, Romania, Nov. 19— Dorina Ciuplan, a 40-year-old mother of three teen-agers, recalled with a mixture of terror and emotion the nine self-induced abortions she endured during Communist rule under Nicolae Ceausescu.
''I sometimes think I'm lucky to be alive,'' said Mrs. Ciuplan, her eyes watering as she described forcing miscarriages at home and then going to a hospital, where doctors and nurses tormented her with abusive words and rough treatment as they finished terminating the pregnancies rather than let her die.
For more than two decades, contraception and abortions were strictly forbidden by Mr. Ceausescu in an attempt to build his country into a colossus through population growth. His government was overthrown in 1989, and one of its legacies was orphanages filled with unwanted and neglected children.
Another legacy of those horrific years, for Romania's women, is abortion. Some 10,000 women are believed to have died from complications of illegal abortions, and many more were permanently maimed.
Abortions were legalized as soon as Mr. Ceausescu was toppled, and contraception is theoretically available through the state health system.
But overwhelmingly, Romania remains what Western doctors call an ''abortion culture,'' with an abortion rate that remains the highest in Europe. It also has by far the highest rate of pregnancy-related mortality, the strongest indication that Romania continues to lag far behind the rest of Europe and Russia in providing reproductive health services for women.
According to the United Nations Population Fund, Romania had 3.2 abortions for every live birth in 1990. By last year, the rate was 2.2 abortions per live birth. In 1995, the equivalent rate was 2.0 in Russia, 0.67 in the Czech Republic and Hungary and 0.2 in Germany.
The reasons why Romanian women turn to abortion center on the reluctance of the Government to promote family-planning despite healthy doses of Western aid to help the country establish such services, Western and Romanian doctors say. Iulian Mincu, who was Minister of Health until recently and who had been a personal physician to Mr. Ceausescu, publicly stated his opposition to family planning. After a public outcry over poor conditions in the health system, Dr. Mincu was dismissed this summer by Mr. Ceausescu's successor, Ion Iliescu, in an attempt to clean up the Government's image before parliamentary and presidential elections that Mr. Iliescu lost anyway.
The President-elect, Emil Constantinescu, made it clear during his campaign that he would make improved health services a priority, and family planning advocates said they were optimistic that the new Government would be more supportive of their efforts.
Without guidance from the Government, many Romanian doctors have been more enthusiastic about the more lucrative work of performing abortions than about recommending birth control, said Daniela Draghica, one of the administrators of 12 pilot family-planning clinics in Romania opened in 1995 and financed by the United States Agency for International Development.
The state pays for abortions, but as with almost all public health services women say they feel obliged to give the doctor a sizable extra payment, thus making abortions more financially rewarding.
A 28-year-old woman who would give only a first name, Adina, was at the gynecological clinic at Giulesti Hospital in Bucharest. She said she had had six abortions. An abortion costs 3,000 lei, a little less than $1, at public hospitals, where the vast majority of Romanians get their health care. But she said she had paid an additional $7 as a ''gift'' to the doctor.
On top of this, many doctors, repeating myths from the Ceausescu years, tell women exaggerated stories that oral contraceptives are deleterious to their health, Mrs. Draghica said.
''Women had these myths about contraception,'' Mrs. Draghica said. ''The doctors had told them that pills were bad because they made women fat and gave them heart disease. It's a battle to get their confidence.''
Some women are beginning to look for other alternatives. Maria Staicu, 41, who lives in the city of Sibiu and has two children, said the pain and debasement she endured in 1991 when she had a legal abortion left her determined not to go through it again.
''They did 20 women in a few minutes: 'Ready, go; ready, go,' '' she said, describing the atmosphere in the state hospital. In the last five years of the Ceausescu regime, she had managed to buy Hungarian-made oral contraceptives on the black market, she said. After her abortion in 1991, she was fitted with an I.U.D.. ''I would prefer anything else than an abortion,'' she said.
Romania remains the only country in Eastern Europe not to manufacture any kind of contraceptive. Thus supplies, including condoms, must be imported and are too expensive for many women, who say they have trouble even getting food on the table in the chaotic Romanian economy. Birth control pills imported from Hungary, the Netherlands or Germany cost as much for a month's supply -- or in many cases up to two or three times as much -- as an abortion, even though Western aid helps subsidize some of the cost.
The Western aid stems from publicity in 1990 about the plight of the unwanted Romanian children. Foreign assistance was sent to help care for the children, and for a longer-term solution, funds were offered to create family- planning services, including a $14 million World Bank loan and a $5 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development.
In the last year, a little progress has been made, but not enough given the resources that have been made available, those who work in the program say.
According to a report by Adriana Baban, a psychologist who counsels at one of the Romanian family-planning clinics funded by the A.I.D., and Dr. Henry P. David, director of the Transnational Family Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Washington, Romania had at least 445 deaths attributable to illegal abortion in 1989. By 1992, the number had been reduced to 120 and last year to 59.
But despite these reductions of deaths from self-induced abortions, the pregnancy-related mortality rate remains startlingly high. The World Health Organization reported that in 1990, for every 100,000 live births in Romania, 84 women died in childbirth. By contrast, the rate in Poland was 19. Last year, the number in Romania was 48. In the United States last year, the rate was 8, according to the Population Reference Bureau.
Photo: Abortions and contraceptives, banned under Communism, are now legal, but old habits and a creaky health service have kept Romania's pregnancy-related death rate one of the world's highest. Two women -- one awaiting an abortion, the other recovering from one -- shared a bed at a Bucharest hospital. (Caroline Penn/Impact Photos) Graphs: ''STATUS REPORT: Abortion Picture'' shows abortion rate for various countries. (Source: The Alan Gutmacher Institute)
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/21/w...ortion-culture.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
This is the world you prolifers are going to get. Most of you have never in your life taken a government class so you know nothing about unintended consequences. This is a lesson in that.
