I called to find out what kind of counseling can a woman receive when she calls the Life Line. I told them I am a student, that I got pregnant and that I don’t know whether to keep it or not. On the other end of the line, I could hear a warm female voice. She introduced herself, told me her age, that she is from Iași and that she’s volunteering with the center.

About three minutes into the conversation, she brought up the consequences of abortion. “If you will go to an obstetrics and gynecological medical practice, you should be very well informed about the complications and accidents which can occur during the abortion or after the abortion.”

The woman from the Life Line continued to present a long list of physical and psychological problems which she claims can be caused by abortion: “profound bleeding”, “uterine hemorrhages”, “uterine perforations”, “irreversible damages to the cervix”, “lesions on the internal organs”, depression and suicidal attempts “which can last for 10 years after the abortion” and even cancer. “More than 60% of the women who developed breast cancer and cervical cancer are among those who had abortions”, the woman from the helpline also told me.

In reality, most of the consequences enumerated have a very slim chance of happening, and some are downright false. For example, uterine perforations may appear in 0.05% of the women who go through a surgical abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, and 0.32% of those who have an abortion in the second trimester.

The alleged connection between abortion and breast cancer is false. “Scientific research studies didn’t find any causal link between abortion and breast cancer”, the American Cancer Society attests. The causal link between abortion and depression was also scientifically invalidated by numerous studies. It was also shown that there is no scientific proof for the idea claiming that women who get an abortion are more exposed to the possibility of a suicide attempt compared with the ones who keep the pregnancy.

The phone call with the volunteer from Telverde Pregnancy Info lasted over 40 minutes. Besides the monologue about the serious consequences of abortion, the woman asked questions, was patient and a good listener, discussed her own personal experience openly and even offered financial support.

She suggested that I should just carry the pregnancy full term, even if I don’t want the baby, because at least then it could be adopted. “No one will know that you left that child in an orphanage. But he will live.” “Otherwise you kill him. That is murder.”

But a child left in an orphanage will most likely stay in an orphanage. In Romania, there are around 53,000 institutionalized children. Only 1,280 of them were adopted in 2017.

Hunting in maternities

The donations for supporting the Telverde Pregnancy Info center are going to the bank account of an association called Glasul Vieții [‘Voice of life’ – n.a.], led by Father Dan Damaschin. Involved in numerous humanitarian campaigns for supporting orphans, which were covered by the media in great detail, he also played an important part in something much less known.

Father Damaschin managed to convince the doctors from the biggest maternity hospital in Iași to stop performing abortions on demand.

In 2005, when he started performing religious service at the chapel within the Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecological Hospital ‘Cuza Vodă’ in Iași, things were ‘much different’, he recounted in an interview he gave in 2013 for the website Doxologia.

“In the beginning it was somewhat like hunting, in the sense that you had to be very vigilant in the hospital’s courtyard. At the specialized outpatient center, where they perform abortions, I was told I was barred from entering, since it’s an area between the hospital and the exterior and it wasn’t a space pertaining to my specialty. Then I had to look very carefully at the mothers who pass by and identify them, it’s very easy to spot those who are on their way to the outpatient center to the abortion. And I was holding back a bit because I didn’t know where this could lead. In the meantime we found a more effective solution, to put a female person to stand guard there, one of our voluntaries, a well-prepared social worker, who will approach the women, and, depending on how available each one is, to lead them to the church so we can discuss the issue in more detail.”

The priest also shared, in his interview from 2013, that “after 7 years of religious service at the church within the hospital courtyard, dedicated to the ‘Birth of Christ’, the communication with the doctors improved.” We can assume that in the following years the communication of Father Damaschin with the doctors improved even more, since in the present day the Cuza Vodă Maternity is no longer performing abortions.

“We don’t do pregnancy terminations in the hospital. Try a private practice”, a medical professional working at the maternity hospital told me when I called them last October to ask what are the steps for scheduling an abortion.

“We don’t do pregnancy terminations in the hospital. I don’t know why you keep pushing. We just don’t do abortions and that’s that! I can’t tell you more. They’re not done. For a long time now, not since recently.”

I told them I can’t afford to go to a private practice. “It’s not our problem what you can afford or not. It’s your problem.”

Although the conversation was simulated on my part, I felt my stomach go in knots. What if the conversation would have been genuine? How does it feel to hear these words, “it’s not our problem”, when you need an abortion?

I compared the attitudes of the two women, the one from the Telverde Life Line and the employee from the Cuza Vodă Maternity. The employee spoke without a trace of compassion, with the kind of coldness that sends you plunging in the middle of a vast loneliness. Compared to this, the voice on the Life Line phone was warm and understanding. But in a way, both women were broadcasting the same message, but in different ways. We don’t do abortions / You shouldn’t have abortions.

Terminating a pregnancy is a legal public service in Romania. But for how much longer can we speak about the freedom to choose when a state-owned maternity refuses to perform a public service, without offering any explanation, while the only helpline which promises support and information for pregnant women tells you that abortion is murder?

The missionaries

Over 30 counselling centers for pregnancy crises are currently active in Romania, or so I can find out by reading the list on the website of the ‘March for life’, the 2019 edition. A lot of these centers are also running sexual education programs for teenagers, in which abstinence is presented as the only contraceptive method.

I discover that only a few of these belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church, who entered the playing field of reproductive rights pretty late in the game. Most centers belong to NGOs established by American neo-protestant missionaries or by Romanian citizens established in the United States. For example, the Pro Vita Clinic Foundation in Cluj was established in the 90s, with the support of two American organizations: Pregnancy Resource Center International and Global Partners Inc. The last one is led by Mike Menning, ex Republican Senator in the state of Minnesota.

The Americans came up with the resources and the expertise. They brought video resources and brochures, opened maternity houses and counselling centers for pregnancy crises, lobbied in the Parliament.

What were their motivations? An article from 2003, published in the Baptist Press, says that Christian missionaries are “working hard in Romania for stopping the practice of killing unborn children”.

Sharon Herrera, a missionary from Nashville, Tennessee, who established pregnancy crises centers in several cities in Romania, financed in their first years of activity with money from American donors, explains in the same article that abortions are used as a contraceptive method in Romania, and that most Romanian women abort for financial reasons.

“The youngest to get a curettage is 12”, “Because of the curette, doctors get blisters on their hands”, “The pupils in the capital demand banning abortions”, these are only a few of the titles of articles about abortion, published by the Evenimentul Zilei newspaper between June and December 1992. By researching the newspaper’s archive from that time period at the Central University Library in Bucharest, I notice the catastrophic but also cynical way in which abortion was discussed. The doctors, society, the pupils, they are harmed by it. The women’s point of view, alas, is absent. They are just the ones who ‘get a curettage’. The large number of terminated pregnancies is attributed to the legalization of abortions, through the Law-Decree No. 1 of 26th of December 1989.

But while I am exploring the archive, I run into other titles as well. “State pharmacies in Bucharest don’t have any kind of contraceptive pills”, announces an article from 19th September 1992. Two months away from this one, another article about the lack of contraceptives is published. “You can’t find condoms anymore either”, reads another title from the same page with “Senator Ioan Alexandru argues for banning abortion”. Two years earlier, Ioan Alexandru, a poet and founding member of the PNȚCD political party, had established the first pro-vita organization in Romania.