In the middle of October 1966, Nicolae Ceausescu (1918–1989) signed Decree 770, which aimed to increase Romania's population and workforce. In response to a significant decline in the birth rate, Ceausescu decreed that by 2000, the number of citizens must increase from 23 to 30 million.
In his limitless vainglory, Ceausescu, known as the King of Pomp and Pageantry, wanted everything to be bigger and more awe-inspiring than anywhere else. One example of his megalomania is the monumental Parliamentary Place, which is, by volume, the world’s third-largest building after the Aztec pyramid of Teotihuacan and the Cape Canaveral rocket assembly hangar. The dictator demolished the majority of Bucharest's lower city center, leveled a hill, and rerouted the Dambovita River to make room for this megastructure.
That is why his pro-natalist policies had to be draconian to achieve an increase in population. The government declared abortion and contraception illegal, except for women over the age of 45, those who had more than five children, those who became pregnant through rape or incest, and those whose lives were in danger due to a medical condition. Divorce was restricted, and a “childlessness tax" was imposed, but special awards were offered to women who had ten or more children—in a country where the average monthly wage was less than US$80, it was a tempting proposal.
To enforce Decree 770, sex education at schools glorified the benefits of motherhood and the heroic women who complied with the duty of giving the country and its leader a vast progeny. Authorities closely monitored pregnant women to ensure they gave birth and emptied pharmacy shelves of contraceptives. Secret police agents visited maternity wards to closely monitor hospital procedures and avoid illegal terminations.
As always, the poorest population, factory workers and peasants, drew the short straw. Unable to legally obtain exorbitantly expensive contraceptives sold only on the black market, their only resource was clandestine abortions. Between the date the decree was issued and Ceausescu’s downfall, the mortality among pregnant Romanian women was the highest in Europe. Over 10,000 women died during illegal terminations, and some 2 million children were born to families who either did not want them or could not care for them.
More than thirty years after Ceausescu's court martial and execution by firing squad, Romania is still attempting to deal with the legacy of 600 "casa de copii," or orphanages.
In the early 1990s, when Romania opened its borders to voluntary organizations and foreign aid for the first time in 44 years, the world was horrified to see babies and children, many HIV-positive or infected with Hepatitis B, caged and lying in their feces, chained to iron beds, or left naked in sub-zero temperatures in conditions similar to Nazi concentration camps. The US ABC’s 20/20 program made a landmark documentary exposing Romania’s institutions, leading to a wave of international investigations from non-government organizations. One such volunteer, let’s call her Anna, remembers her visit to a casa de copii in 1993.
The first thing she remembers is a strange woosh-woosh sound like ripples licking the sand on a beach as she walked down the corridor. Then, the accompanying nurse opened a door, and they entered a room with cots positioned in rows by all the walls. The windows were large and barred, but without curtains. Each cot contained (how harsh but accurate the word “contain” sounds, Anna told me) two or three children, boys mainly, light-skinned like most Romanian children, their heads shaven, with eyes as dark and big as olives. The children rocked in their cots like broken-down automatons, releasing the eerie ripple-like sounds she had heard in the corridor. All she could think of, she said, at that moment was a Rudyard Kipling poem she’d read as a girl.
The Sons of Mary smile and are blessed---they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
Realizing she was surrounded by the sons of Martha, who “tally, transport, and deliver the Sons of Mary duly by land and main,” she left quickly and didn’t return.
In the mid-1990s, the NGO Save the Children started compiling a database of institutionalized Romanian children and what had become of them. However, it was impossible to complete, as many had simply disappeared. Thousands were trafficked around Europe. Some ended up in the streets or the railway tunnels under Bucharest. A lucky few were adopted, mainly in the US and the UK. Still, many such adoptions were not exactly success stories. Brought up without social interaction, stimulation, or psychological comfort, they displayed profound developmental delays and abnormal social-emotional behavior that their new families could not address and cope with once in their new homes. Despite being welcomed into warm and loving environments, many youngsters developed long-lasting psychological scars and mental illnesses due to early neglect, deprivation, and malnourishment.
Romania’s Abandoned Children, a 2014 study published after nearly a decade of research, reveals that institutional care is a ‘particularly harmful’ way to care for children. The study indicates institutionalized children are slower to acquire language skills and worse at problem-solving and reasoning. They also display increased rates of psychiatric disorders, particularly emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression.
The study is pertinent not only for the nearly 200,000 formerly institutionalized children who are now young adults in Romania but also for orphans worldwide. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), individuals other than their parents are raising between 80 and 100 million children worldwide, with an additional 2 million children in institutions.
The Economist's 2018 documentary states that Romania plans to shut down its remaining 163 orphanages, where approximately 7,000 children still live, within the next decade. Romania is currently transitioning to family-based care and tiny group homes, in line with a global trend. However, successive democratic administrations have assumed little responsibility for the communist regime's shortcomings. The only help the Decree Generation can count on comes from national and international NGOs and private donations.
But although for many of the former victims of the Romanian orphanages there is still no relief, others remain positive: they study, work, try to form stable relationships, and have kids of their own, proving that despite the adverse forecasts, at least some of them can put behind the status of “irrecoverable” and join the ranks of the sons of Mary.
Polish by birth, a citizen of the world by choice. First story short-listed for the Irish Independent/Hennessy Awards, Ireland, 1996. Since she went back to writing fiction in 2020, more than 70 of her stories, flash fiction and non-fiction, have been accepted for publication. She has recently won 1st prize in the International Human Rights Arts Movement literary contest and received an honorary mention in the Theresa Hamel Literary Competition.