Rumania wants more babies

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 16

Rumania wants more babies

There is not much to laugh about in Rumania nowadays, especially since the Government celebrated Women’s Day recently by intruding into the last dark comer of personal privacy, the bedroom.

If independent reports from several diplomatic sources are to be believed, then 1984 will be an Orwellian year, especially for Rumanian women. The main Communist Party committee concerned with public health has met to consider the disturbing fact that the Rumanian population is shrinking. The reason is not hard to find. Out of 743,000 registered pregnancies, the committee was told only about 40 per cent result in,, live births. The rest end mosSy in

abortion. Abortion in Rumania, unlike in most other Communist countries, is strictly illegal except for women who can prove that a pregnancy puts their life at risk.

Rumania, as is openly stated, desperately needs more shoulders to the plough and more noses to the industrial grindstone. Now the leadership wants to make sure that more of the pregnancies — and the number of unknown pregnancies and abortions could be as high as those registered — end in births. It is said that there are plans, already implemented in some provincial places,, to submit women workers in industry to a monthly blood test. Those who are proved pregnant will have some explaining to do if

they are not pregnant the month after.

The target is four children per healthy Rumanian female. The necessity, the Rumanian planners say, is to achieve an average of three children in each family. The country, they say, could easily accommodate twice as large a population as it does now. This despite the fact that those-living there now are on an existence minimum.

Where direct persuasion fails, indirect methods threaten. Women who fail to produce the required number of children according to schedule will be in danger of losing their jobs or chances of promotion to those who have served their country better.—Copyright LondO“Observer” Service.