The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania

by Gail Kligman

The political hypocrisy and personal horrors of one of the most repressive anti-abortion regimes in history came to the world's attention soon after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Photographs of orphans with vacant eyes, sad faces, and wasted bodies circled the globe, as did alarming maternal mortality statistics and heart-breaking details of a devastating infant AIDS epidemic. Gail Kligman's chilling ethnography―of the state and of the politics of reproduction―is the first in-depth examination of this extreme case of political intervention into the most intimate aspects of everyday life.

Ceausescu's reproductive policies, among which the banning of abortion was central, affected the physical and emotional well-being not only of individual men, women, children, and families but also of society as a whole. Sexuality, intimacy, and fertility control were fraught with fear, which permeated daily life and took a heavy moral toll as lying and dissimulation transformed both individuals and the state. This powerful study is based on moving interviews with women and physicians as well as on documentary and archival material. In addition to discussing the social implications and human costs of restrictive reproductive legislation, Kligman explores the means by which reproductive issues become embedded in national and international agendas. She concludes with a review of the lessons the rest of the world can learn from Romania's tragic experience.

Genres: Romania, History, Nonfiction

350 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1998

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do you get when you combine a country bent on increasing its population with a totalitarian surveillance state? In Ceausescu's regime, you get tragedy upon tragedy for the health and lives of women. Sure, in communist Romania they paid lip service towards gender equality, insisting that women were to be equal workforce participants, but there was a basic conflict between their rhetoric of liberation and policies of compulsory motherhood. In 1966 abortion was largely banned, with entreaties that women have 4-5 children in service to the state. As a result, Romania had the highest maternal mortality rate by the 1980s, mostly attributable to illegal abortions, as well epidemics of infant AIDS and abuse of institutionalized unwanted children and orphans.

The Politics of Duplicity concerns these coercive reproductive policies ("political demography") of the Ceausescu government from 1966-1989, and how women and doctors successfully and unsuccessfully circumvented the ban. As an "ethnography of the state", it details how political demography fit into the overall structure of the communist government, with perhaps a bit too much detail on general policy concerns for my tastes. Unfortunately the public health data from this era are notoriously unreliable, so drawing conclusions about the extent of harm to the population is tenuous (and Kligman does note this repeatedly). The best data come from women's stories of their illegal abortions, which provide glimpses into lives lived under constant invasion of privacy, threat of exposure or punishment, and duplicitous interactions.

[Socrate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Titluri precum cele de mai sus apar cu regularitate pe prima pagină a marilor ziare din lumea întreagă. În 1996, la şase ani după ce imaginile dramatice şi tulburătoare ale orfanilor din România au apărut în toate publicaţiile, simpatia comunităţii internaţionale ultragiate s-a îndreptat asupra orfanilor abandonaţi ai Chinei. Copiii nedoriţi din aceste ţări reprezintă, într-o oarecare măsură, consecinţele tangibile ale politicii coercitive pro- şi respectiv antinataliste duse de cele două state, în condiţiile în care ele au contrazis ori au subminat posibilităţile familiei. În China, unde începînd din 1979 un cuplu nu putea să aibă, în mod legal, decît un singur copil, pentru a fi controlată creşterea populaţiei, limitarea dimensiunii familiei a dus la apariţia a tot felul de strategii de rezistenţă populară, incluzînd infanticidul împotriva copiilor de sex feminin. În România lui Nicolae Ceauşescu, unde avortul a fost interzis în 1966, statul îi pretindea fiecărei familii cîte patru-cinci copii, pentru a forţa astfel creşterea populaţiei. În consecinţă, avortul ilegal a devenit principala metodă de control al fertilităţii. Întreruperea ilegală a sarcinii şi ceea ce este cunoscut sub denumirea de „turism pentru avort" sînt practicate pe scară largă în unele părţi ale lumii, în special în ţări precum Brazilia, Italia, Irlanda şi Polonia, unde autoritatea morală a Bisericii catolice influenţează decisiv viaţa de zi cu zi. Se estimează că aproximativ 4 000 de femei irlandeze călătoresc anual în Anglia pentru a face o întrerupere de sarcină. Turismul pentru avort a cunoscut o adevărată explozie în Polonia postcomunistă după ce Biserica catolică din această ţară a încheiat cu succes o campanie de interzicere a avortului. Se apreciază că femeile braziliene fac între unu şi trei avorturi în anii lor de fertilitate, iar sterilizarea a devenit în această ţară o metodă preferată de control al naşterilor. În Italia, rata natalităţii este cea mai scăzută din Europa, în pofida faptului că aproximativ 84 % din populaţie se declară catolici practicanţi. În fiecare din aceste cazuri, există o clară discrepanţă între ceea ce se propovăduieşte de la tribuna politică sau din amvon şi ceea ce se întîmplă ca răspuns la exigenţele vieţii reale.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very complex and heavy reading. Kligman is writing an "ethnography of the state," which makes her project very interesting and unique (since typically ethnographies would focus on a circumscribed group of people, or an ethnos, so to speak). In writing about the state, it becomes clear that what she is studying is not culture per se, but instead the methods through which power and knowledge is deployed.

[Zach Irvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea going into this book what was in store. I saw it on a co-worker’s shelf and the title grabbed me, so I asked to borrow it. Before that I had never had any exposure to anything related to Romania. This book was a startling crash course.

Kligman chronicles the restriction of abortion and contraception during the pronatalist years spanning from the 1960s-90s. During that time, abortion was outlawed and the Ceauscescu regime (leader of Romania at that time) ‘encouraged’ the population to procreate as much as possible to increase the political demographic of the country. Ultimately, this led to increasingly precarious positions for both poor families and the medical establishment. The decree had the opposite affect, largely because of worsening economic conditions for the Romanian people. Women ended up having to find alternate, and often more dangerous means, to obtain an abortion, leading to a skyrocketing maternal and infant death rate.

Kligman does a really good job of juxtaposing the official rhetoric of the regime with the personal accounts of everyday people and doctors under these laws. It turns out, just banning abortion often leads to an increasing amount of lies published by the government to fit the official narrative, and an increased amount of lying by the citizenry as they try to navigate obtaining an abortion by illegal means.

Great book, but terrible. Highly recommend.

[Doina · Rating 5 out of 5]

O lectura dureroasa pentru cine a trait ultimele decenii ale regimului comunist in Romania, si o carte obligatorie pentru cine vrea sa inteleaga acele vremuri si, mai ales, consecintele pe care le tirim dupa noi: duplicitatea, complicitatea, tacerea lasa care inca ne caracterizeaza comportamentul individual si colectiv

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poorly written--very repetitive--but still important. There are few books on Ceausescu's Romania.

[Mayrose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yo what the fuck

[art of storytelling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was assigned parts of this book for a class on the history of sexuality and I was so interested in the topic that I finished the unread parts just now and–wow. This book serves as one of the best arguments for the continued legalization of abortion and the importance of the availability of birth control that I've ever seen. The book is mainly a series of facts, statistics, anecdotes from interviews, and law talk, which could potentially be boring but it was quite effective and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the effects on the population of the oppressive Ceausescu regime in Romania upon the reproductive lives of its citizens. Very relevant for the current political climate and a good read for anyone interested in what happens to a society which makes abortion illegal.

[Adrian Fanaca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good but sometimes dry study of Ceausescu's Decreet in 1966 which banned abortion. Full of stories of women who suffered a lot because of illegal homemade abortions, of doctors sent to prison and trialed for these illegal and remunerated abortions. Full of statistics about the results and effects of such a idiotic measure (sorry conservative religious people). And it did not even cause a raise in the Romanian population as expected by these idiotic rulers of Romania. Poland, mind you!