Romania’s ban on contraception and abortion produced vast numbers of abandoned orphans

Evidence

Consider the case of Cyprian, a healthy and cute baby boy born in Carpenis, Romania, in April 1990. The baby’s birth mother, Alin, really didn’t want to bring him into the world. He was her fourth child. The government of Romania, under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu, had outlawed both contraception and abortion, and Alin and her family barely survived on the chickens they raised on their tiny farm and the few vegetables from their scrappy yard. Desperately poor, she and her husband decided they could not afford to keep their new son. So right after he was born, they dropped him off at a state orphanage and went back to the grim work of keeping themselves and their remaining children alive. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 98

Categorization

• CANDY: A striking, conversational opener: Ceauşescu’s population policy created 170,000 orphans warehoused like animals.