For an understanding of why abortion rates increase when you try to decrease them by limiting legal access to them, watch this documentary about what happened in Romanian, under the communist authoritarian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu who ran Romanian from 1965 until he was overthrown in the only bloody coup in Eastern Europe's rejection of Marxist-Leninist style communism in 1989 when he and his wife were executed by firing squad.
Ceaușescu implemented one of the most devastating anti-abortion programs in any of the Soviet proxy states in the world, known as Decree 770. He was like the Catholic Church on steroids, outlawing all forms of birth control, and completely banning abortion. Ceaușescu wanted to increase the population of Romania, as all leaders do of the countries they rule, because without new human livestock, the economy stagnates, there are no police, no soldiers, no fight fighters, or anyone to run social services, a huge bureaucracy (which Marxist-Leninist style states love to have), no one to tend the crops, and so on.
But, instead of having the intended outcome of having more nuclear families with marriage and stable children in stable families, it just lead to a huge state run orphanage, where abandoned children, or children who couldn't be taken care of by the women who bore them.
This left a large amount of abandoned children who became a major welfare burden on the state as someone had to take care of them, and large orphanages sprang up all over the country. Many women began going to "back alley" abortion doctors, and as a result, many died because of the intolerable, unsterilized conditions, and doctors (who sometimes were not doctors at all) ended up simply murdering these women who were simply seeking to safely give up these zygoates, or fetuses, or whatever term they were in - even almost a full term baby, knowing they would have a terrible life because the mother could not take care of them.
So, I present to you a documentary on Nicolae Ceaușescu's outcome of his Decree 770 and what happens when a state completely outlaws abortion and all forms of birth control, 'Ceaușescu's Kids', available on YouTube at the following link:
https://youtu.be/yGUhoGIHhbg [NSFW]
If for some reason you cannot watch it, I recommend downloading the free to use TunnelBear VPN at https://www.tunnelbear.com/ and switch your IP to one of the countries that allows you to view it (Youtube should say). Make sure and tweet out your support of Tunnelbear and they will give you a full free 1GB of download bandwidth for the month. If Tunnelbear is unavailable on your operating system, look for another one in your app store, or extension store for the browser or operating system/smartphone you are using. If you are on Android or iOS you can use Opera's free unlimited VPN at https://www.operavpn.com/ and if you are on Windows, Mac, or Linux, you can download the Opera web browser from http://www.opera.com/computer which has a free unlimited VPN built in too, which at the time of writing connects to the following places: "Optimal Location (a location closest to you, passed through Opera's VPN service - will not help watching a Youtube video in these circumstances), Canada, United States, Germany, Netherlands, and Singapore."
Be forewarned that this documentary has some images of nude or partially nude children in hospital settings and some of the scenes can be disturbing and very sad to see and listen to. I will always remember the scene of the woman describing how she was forced to give herself an abortion, and explained in graphic detail how she did it, because she could not afford to raise another child and decided not to bring another child into this world who she knew would not be feed, clothed, or taken care of and the better option was to terminate the life before it was started.
For those of you wondering, I am pro-choice, but I believe it should be the last choice. I believe access to birth control of all types should be provided by the state and insurance and we should have health coverage provided by the state. I encourage you to watch this documentary with an open mind and all the way through so, if you believe in a "right to life" position, you will see what an outcome of the ending of all abortions would lead to - as this is not a theoretical idea that has never been done in the world, it has been done and how it ended was in extreme detriment to the people involved - the women, the children, and after the collapse of the Soviet state that paid for the health care of all people, those children who were left with no one to care for them and slipped through the cracks of a broken and financially bankrupt government.
For those people who are pro-life people who want to argue about life beginning at conception, I always send them this video by the late great comedian, George Carlin, who succinctly defines the pro-life movement as "conservatives who care about you from conception until 9 months, but after that, they don't want to know you." Watch the video for the full piece, and of course it is also NSFW.
George Carlin - Abortion
https://youtu.be/9kCyqBKewr4?t=20s
For more information on Nicolae Ceaușescu you can view his Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceaușescu
Decree 770: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
For books about Nicolae Ceaușescu, there are several good titles including the first one, which is relevant to this topic:
* The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania by Gail Kligman http://amzn.to/2tVRLeK
Overview: "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."
* Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescus' Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption by Ion Mihai Pacepa http://amzn.to/2uqKfsT
* The Rise and Fall of Nicolae Ceausescu by Cristian Butnariu (Note: this is a 3 part series on the history of Romania, and this is the final volume about Ceausescu) http://amzn.to/2uqXZ6N
* Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite: The Rise and Fall of the Ceausescus by Edward Behr http://amzn.to/2ts70Z2
* The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 by Peter Siani-Davies http://amzn.to/2tVIi6U
If you have any comments, please leave them in the Disqus comment system below, or - if you can be civil, you can contact me on Twitter @pogue25. If you come at me with pictures of dead fetuses or any bullshit like that, I will block you and report you immediately.
