Decree 770 in Romania

[dominikus28]

I have heard Pro-abortionists use the argument against abortion that making abortion illegal will hurt women, as it did when Ceausescu of communist Romania, banned abortion and contraception and this led to many women dying from back-alley abortions and children being given to orphanages.

My question is, how can I refute this? Is there some other background information which can put this into context? Can we blame this result on the abortion/contraception policy, or were there other factors which caused this?
I am against abortion and contraception, but this is an arguement I cannot just ignore. Anyone? Thanks

 

[Samuel63]

This can be countered with the following statement.

Making abortion legal will improve the conditions where it is performed and save more desparate mothers. However, it will kill many times more babies.

Compare the number of mothers that die by back alley abortions (very small indeed) to the number of babies killed daily today in a legal and antiseptic environment. The numbers just do not balance - not even close.

Save a few moms by trading in millions of innocent babies…? No deal.

 

[Defender1]

I have heard Pro-abortionists use the argument against abortion that making abortion illegal will hurt women, as it did when Ceausescu of communist Romania, banned abortion and contraception and this led to many women dying from back-alley abortions and children being given to orphanages.

My question is, how can I refute this? Is there some other background information which can put this into context? Can we blame this result on the abortion/contraception policy, or were there other factors which caused this?
I am against abortion and contraception, but this is an arguement I cannot just ignore. Anyone? Thanks

Once the stories hit of injury or death occurring from these back ally abortions the number of back ally abortions will die down

 

[promethius95945]

I have heard Pro-abortionists use the argument against abortion that making abortion illegal will hurt women, as it did when Ceausescu of communist Romania, banned abortion and contraception and this led to many women dying from back-alley abortions and children being given to orphanages.

My question is, how can I refute this? Is there some other background information which can put this into context? Can we blame this result on the abortion/contraception policy, or were there other factors which caused this?
I am against abortion and contraception, but this is an arguement I cannot just ignore. Anyone? Thanks

Do I have sympathy for bank robbers who die in the act of robbing banks? What about murderers who die in a shootout with the cops? Not really, no. If someone suffers the consequences of their immoral and illegal actions, I pity them, but not to the point that I would consider that a valid argument for legalizing their activities.

And we should also not forget that there are women who die or are permanently injured in LEGAL abortions right now…

As to the argument about children going into adoption or orphanages, perhaps I should use a historical concept: in the 1700s and early 1800s, they believed that sickness could be cured by draining the evil “humours” in a person. They would, rather than treating a disease, effectively “bleed” a person. This, of course, was bad medicine, and many suppose that the REAL reason George Washington died was from blood loss rather than sickness.

The same thing applies to abortion: there are social ills that mean some people will be born and live in poverty. The solution is not to murder those people in the womb, but rather to address the REAL causes of social injustice.

Abortion in that regard is counter to helping the plight of the poor… it allows us to conveniently ignore the social injustice of society by promoting the idea that poor women can murder their babies to get ahead. In that case, abortion is a ghastly crime against the economically disadvantaged, not a deliverance from poverty.

 

[St_Francis]

Promethius,
that was a great post with excellent explanations.

 

[1inICXC]

I can tell you a few thing about Romania, Ceausescu’s regime and abortion.

1. To this very day there is very little education on abortion. Women here have multiple abortions, I’ve heard about women having 42 abortions!!! I know teens who’ve already had 2 or 3. If you call a clinic and ask how much it costs, many say: don’t worry about the cost. There’s a diabolical culture of abortion here, women talk about abortions as they talk about going to the hairdresser.

In 1990 abortion was legalized and numbers soared to almost 1000 000 abortions that year- the population was roughly at 23 000 000.
The disregard for the life of the unborn extends to the mother as well. In maternities the conditions are horrendous to this day and many women and babies get infected with all kinds of things. Romania to this day has the highest infant mortality rate in all of Europe, including Eastern Europe. Doctors are negligent and hygiene is very poor. Many women whose children died at birth were told, don’t worry, you’ll have another one.

I am telling you this to understand the mentality here- there is no respect for the dignity of human life- and to understand that all those back alley abortions and deaths are much closer related to the mentality of the people than the legal status of abortion. You will be astounded to read about what happens in maternities over here.

Men are a huge fault as well. They aren’t even allowed to be with their wives during l&d and even in the private sector, where conditions and service is much better they always try to discourage the fathers presence during L&D because of this conception that if the man sees what happens he will leave the woman - mind you, these cases are frequent!

Men send women to the abortion mills as if they are sending a dog to fetch a shoe.

No one knows the precise death rate in the Ceausescu’s ara as it wasn’t documented - personally, i thonk you have to consider the terrible poverty of that time and realize that many women and children were dying during childbirth not just as a result of abortions.

In terms of contraception, that too was legalized and made accessible in 1990 and look what it did to the number of abortions.

 

[1inICXC]

Do I have sympathy for bank robbers who die in the act of robbing banks? What about murderers who die in a shootout with the cops? Not really, no. If someone suffers the consequences of their immoral and illegal actions, I pity them, but not to the point that I would consider that a valid argument for legalizing their activities.

And we should also not forget that there are women who die or are permanently injured in LEGAL abortions right now…

As to the argument about children going into adoption or orphanages, perhaps I should use a historical concept: in the 1700s and early 1800s, they believed that sickness could be cured by draining the evil “humours” in a person. They would, rather than treating a disease, effectively “bleed” a person. This, of course, was bad medicine, and many suppose that the REAL reason George Washington died was from blood loss rather than sickness.

The same thing applies to abortion: there are social ills that mean some people will be born and live in poverty. The solution is not to murder those people in the womb, but rather to address the REAL causes of social injustice.

Abortion in that regard is counter to helping the plight of the poor… it allows us to
conveniently ignore the social injustice of society by promoting the idea that poor women can murder their babies to get ahead. In that case, abortion is a ghastly crime against the economically disadvantaged, not a deliverance from poverty.

Precisely, and in Romania specifically, if not in all Eastern Euro countries, it’s the family values that are completely messed up. The man works- if he’s not too alcoholic for that, beats his wfe and children and runs around with other women while the woman is a slave. Things are changing with the emerging generation but the era in question was more or less as painted above. Good, healthy marriages are a rarity in this country and I feel that the rigid, Orthodox formalism has a lot to do with it. But I’ll leave the corruption and failure of the Orthodox church for another time

 

[puzzleannie]

I have heard Pro-abortionists use the argument against abortion that making abortion illegal will hurt women, as it did when Ceausescu of communist Romania, banned abortion and contraception and this led to many women dying from back-alley abortions and children being given to orphanages.

by this logic (and you cite no proof of statistics so I assume there is none) since people are going to go out and murder in alleys and homes, or hire mob hit men to kill people, we should make murder legal and assist them by providing safe places where they can dispatch their enemies cleanly and neatly without having to worry about disposing of the body–tax subsidized of course.