Bucharest, the 18th of February, 2020 – March 2020 will be the Month for Life 2020 “For Life. For Parents. For Children” in over 900 cities and towns from Romania and the Republic of Moldova. It will culminate on Saturday, the 28th of March, with the March for Life 2020 “For Life. For Parents. For Children”.
For Life. For Parents. For Children
We have chosen this year’s theme for the benefit of Romanian parents and their born and unborn children – the ones inside the actual Romanian borders, the ones from the Romanian diaspora, and also the ones from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and other such historical Romanian regions around the country.
Life and Love unite all these parents and their children: parents protect their children’s life out of love.
And the child’s life begins at the moment of conception. A woman becomes a mother from the moment of the child’s conception. A man is a father from the moment of the child’s conception. And nothing can ever change this, no matter what happens to these parents and children.
The child has the potential to brighten her parents’ life and the life of the whole community. The child exists to bring joy and sense into the world. Ending a child’s life is a failure – a failure of love and a failure of accepting one’s responsibility as a parent.
Abortion is the measure of dysfunctionality in the couple or in the family. It is also the measure of the surrounding people’s selfishness. We know this saying is true: “It takes a village to raise a child”. It is just as true that it takes a whole community of people who are careless about their fellow humans to turn abortion into the main solution for pregnancy crisis.
Why we are helpless faced with the dissolution of our society?
For years, we have been looking at global statistics and we have found out about the trafficking of millions of Romanian teenagers and young women. In childhood, they never dreamed to do video chat, they never dreamed of becoming victims of pornography and prostitution. They have fallen victim through lie, violence or abuse. Sometimes, through all of them. And through lack of support. Through our indifference.
For instance, how many of us know that, while Romanian women make only 4% of the feminine population in the Italian province of Ragusa, they contribute with 20% to the total number of abortions registered there? Local doctors consider that this can only be explained by the systematic exploitation they are subjected to.
We find out about these women, we are surprised but we choose to ignore their drama.
We shudder to hear recurring breaking news about these women’s deaths. And yet we continue to ignore them just as we have long ignored the loss of tens of millions of lives to abortion and just as we have ignored the pregnancy crises which usually provoke these abortions.
We could not treat our neighbors better than we treat our unborn children, better than we treat human life itself in its most vulnerable and innocent state.
We cannot behave towards our neighbors better than we behave towards women in pregnancy crisis.
A woman in pregnancy crisis is confronted with lack of support, often with an abusive partner, with the difficulty to continue her studies, with lack of a place to stay, with joblessness. She is threatened with eviction from the house or risks to be fired from her job if she keeps the baby. If we do not help these women, who else will we support?!
We care for our society just as much as we care about our families. And we care about unborn children and women in pregnancy crisis just as much as we care for our families and for society.
There are different types of pregnancy crises. For instance, when the parents are informed that their unborn child has a severe illness. The principles of classical eugenics regard certain lives as unfit to be allowed to continue, which in the European Union has led to aborting 96% of children with Down syndrome. Yet, the surviving 4% are in the spotlight yearly on the 21st of March, on World Down Syndrome Day, a day which actually dissimulates what we are doing to the other 96%.
These children and their parents also need support.
There are pregnancy crises in which families are informed that their unborn children are diagnosed with other severe illnesses – some treatable after birth, other untreatable. Social pressure towards abortion is very high in their case as well. But abortion motivated by the child’s disabilities is our failure to follow the noble calling to support the life of powerless children.
These families and these children need us to stand by them.
Support is also needed for parents whose unborn child has died through miscarriage or at birth. Their drama is so little understood that they are not even allowed to take their son or daughter from the hospital for a proper burial. How many of us know that a child who died before the term of 28 weeks of pregnancy is considered biological waste?
But things can be different! For instance, in Austria, whatever the pregnancy term was when the miscarriage happened, the parents may request, always with the express agreement of the mother, that the authorities release a certificate on the child’s name so that the child can be given a proper burial.
Love defeats abortion
One of the signs used this year at the March for Life reads: “Love defeats abortion”. Abortion will not win because it is not natural. Love is natural. That is why the pro-life movement rejects any type of violence and opposes abortion with love, opposes death with life, lie with the truth, irresponsibility with responsibility, indifference with generosity, and ideology with reality.
The March for Life is the March for Love and Truth!
Come and join love, truth, responsibility, and support!
The March for Life and the activities organized during the Month for Life are the most important pro-life events in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. In the last decade, hundreds of thousands of participants have sent a clear message: society is as good as we make it and we want to build a society which supports pregnant women and their unborn children.
The pro-life people’s love and involvement have saved children’s lives and their parents’ conscience.
This social movement has given birth to dozen of pro-life groups and organizations which day by day offer information and support to women in pregnancy crisis.
By participating to the March for Life, many people have given up indifference towards the dramas they sometimes witness. Many have found the generosity and courage to tell women and families in need of support: “You are not alone. We stand by you. We shall support you”. And they did support them to overcome their pregnancy crisis.
Some have created social assistance centers – just a few though, compared to the huge need that exists. But these initiatives give us hope for the future.
We all want to live in a pro-life city or town, in a pro-life society, in a world which really supports children, women in pregnancy crisis, parents and families. That is why it is very important that you participate in the March for Life and that you invite along your colleagues, friends and acquaintances.
If you will not participate, who will? If you will not support, who will do that for women in pregnancy crisis?
Through our participation and through our efforts to support life, God reveals to us the gravity of pregnancy crisis and also the solutions to it. Only thus shall we be able to act in the benefit of the mother and the child. And this benefit shall extend to the family and then to society itself.
The life given by the parents and received by their children is the first step towards the love which unites and fulfills parents and children.
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The March for Life is non-confessional and apolitical. Local organizers are independent from each other.
In Bucharest, the March for Life 2020 “For Life. For Parents. For Children” is organized by the associations Studenți pentru viață (“Students for Life”, Romania’s pro-life students organization) and România pentru viață (“Romania for Life”). The Bucharest event is scheduled for Saturday, the 28th of March 2020. It will start at 13:00 in Parcul Unirii (Union Square Park) and will last until 15:30 hours, ending in Parcul Tineretului (Tineretului Park), where the speeches will be delivered, followed by the Live for Life concert, which is hosted by actress Ioana Picoș and features pro-life singers Raluca Blejușcă and Alma Nicole Boiangiu.
We do not promote a legal ban on abortion. We just work on changing people’s hearts towards women in pregnancy crisis and their unborn children. We believe that no effective change can happen without a change of heart, without realization of the truth and without real and sufficient support. Why? Because abortion is the consequence of lack of knowledge, lack of love and lack of support, which no law can ever really ensure.
The March for Life happens on the 28th of March, but it does not end then. Romania needs actions in support of Life throughout the year and a natural daily pro-life attitude.
The actual national project, which is the unity of all Romanians, cannot be fulfilled without caring for the least and most vulnerable of us: unborn children.
The Romania of the future is the Romania for Life, is the parents and children’s Romania! Indifference and abortion destroy Romania, while love and responsibility build it!
Eliza Maria Cloțea, President
Asociația Studenți pentru viață
(“Students for Life”, Romania’s pro-life students organization)
Alexandra Nadane, President
Asociația România pentru viață
(“Romania for Life” organization)
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Abortion statistics in Romania
Between 1958 and 2018, Romanian state-owned medical institutions reported 22,880,236 abortions.
This number does not include the abortions made in private clinics and the chemical abortions, which are not being reported. Also, the number does not include the abortions made by fertile Romanian women working abroad, which make up a substantial part of Romania’s population.
Should this data be included, the statistics may double.
The study “Reproductive Health in Romania 1999” (Sănătatea Reproducerii România 1999) made its own estimation, based on data gathered by looking only at surgical abortions: in 1998, the number of “pregnancy terminations” was 27% higher than official statistics.
The easiest way to under-report the number of abortions made in Romania was not registering abortions in the private medical system.
Dr. Mihai Horga, who was the director of the Family and Social Assistance Direction within Romania’s Ministry of Health and Family between 2000 and 2003, wrote in the paper “Contraception and Abortion in Romania, Background paper for the strategic assessment of policy, programme and research issues related to pregnancy in Romania”: “The total abortion rate, which is the number of abortions that a typical woman would have in her lifetime given the current age-specific abortion rate, is 70% higher than the total fertility rate (2.2 compared to 1.3). (…) The ratio of elective abortion to live births remained unchanged at 1.6:1 according to survey estimates for the past three years. This estimate is roughly twice that registered in official statistics, indicating serious underreporting in the health-care system, probably due to the private sector.”
Also, data from the National Institute of Statistics do not take into account chemical abortions. Prof. Virgil Ancar, Head of the Obstetrics-Gynecology Clinic from “Sf. Pantelimon” Hospital in Bucharest estimates this type of procedure accounts for 30% of the total abortion numbers. Therefore, statistics could be up by a third of the actual numbers if we also take into the account this abortion method.
Abortions registered in Romanian state-owned medical institutions
(1958–2018)
Sources:
[1] Abortion statistics and other data—Johnston’s Archive, „Historical abortion statistics, Romania”, September 2015, compiled by Wm. Robert Johnston, online at http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-romania.html
[2] National Institute of Statistics, 2020, Tempo-Online database, Population, online at http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-online/#/pages/tables/insse-table; data are under-reported: it include neither abortions made in private clinics, nor chemical abortions.
International statistics
Since its first legalization in the former Soviet Union, in year 1920, more than one billion children have been killed by abortion worldwide. This horrifying number was presented in the Global Life Campaign1 report published in 2017.
We remind you that Romanian statistics do not include abortions made in private clinics and chemical abortions made in state hospitals and private clinics, which are not reported. Also, abortions made by fertile Romanian women working abroad, which make up a significant part of Romania’s population, are reported in the countries where they work, not in Romania.
Even in these under-reporting circumstances, in 2017 Romania was the eighth country in the world in terms of total number of abortions in its history and the fifth in the world in terms of total abortion numbers compared to actual population number. The Republic of Moldova is one percent behind Romania in the latter top, revealing that attitude towards abortion is the same on both banks of River Prut which separates the two Romanian-speaking countries.
Top 10 countries according to total historical number of abortions registered in state clinics (up to 2017)
Top 10 countries according to total historical number of abortions compared to population number (up to 2017):
| Country | Total no. of abortions up to 2017 | |
| 1. | China | 382,752,000 |
| 2. | Russian Federation | 216,256,000 |
| 3. | USA | 57,827,000 |
| 4. | Ukraine | 52,074,000 |
| 5. | Japan | 39,081,000 |
| 6. | Vietnam | 26,826,000 |
| 7. | India | 24,328,000 |
| 8. | Romania | 22,871,000 |
| 9. | South Korea | 18,371,000 |
| 10. | Kazakhstan | 16,188,000 |
| Country | Abortion % compared to population | |
| 1. | Russian Federation | 152% |
| 2. | Latvia | 123% |
| 3. | Estonia | 123% |
| 4. | Ukraine | 114% |
| 5. | Romania | 106% |
| 6. | Rep. of Moldova | 105% |
| 7. | Belarus | 98% |
| 8. | Serbia | 91% |
| 9. | Kazakhstan | 88% |
| 10. | Bulgaria | 82% |
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The March for Life is at its 10th national edition in Romania.
At global level, The March for Life was organized for the first time in Washington, DC, on the 22nd of January 1974.
In Romania it was first organized in Timisoara in 2008.
The evolution of the number of cities and towns organizing the March for Life and the Month for Life in Romania and the Republic of Moldova
2013 – 23 cities and towns in Romania
2014 – 40 cities and towns in Romania; “The Week for Life” was organized
2015 – 79 cities and towns (77 from Romania and 2 from the Republic of Moldova)
2016 – 130 cities and towns (110 from Romania, 20 from the Republic of Moldova); the first “Month for Life” was organized between the 1st and the 31st of March, 2016
2017 – 287 cities and towns (138 from Romania, 149 from the Republic of Moldova)
2018 – 300 cities and towns from Romania and the Republic of Moldova
2019 – 670 cities and towns (240 in Romania and 430 in the Republic of Moldova).
2020 – An estimated number of 900 cities and towns from Romania and the Republic of Moldova will hold events during the Month for Life, including the March for Life
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We reiterate our yearly plea that society create different tools and provisions to support women in pregnancy crisis, such as:
• establishing support centers for pregnant women where women in pregnancy crisis can benefit on request of free psychological counseling and professional social assistance by a social worker specialized in pregnancy crisis;
• making the necessary legal provisions that will enable the start of the adoption procedure during pregnancy, so the child can be given for adoption immediately after birth if the pregnant woman thinks she cannot raise it – there are models of good practice in the USA, Great Britain, Australia;
• valorizing by society of all actors involved in adoption, in order to fight the stigmatization of adopted children, of adoptive parents and especially stigmatization of mothers who decide to give their children for adoption when major difficulties affect their ability to care for them;
• making the necessary legal provisions to allow mothers who have miscarried to legally bury their miscarried children.
1Abortion Worldwide Report: 100 Nations, 1 Century, 1 Billion Babies, online la http://media.wix.com/ugd/cacd2b_7806916e82d547378e78f74fb3dd9383.pdf