Reply #38: to read it is so much ...umm- better, but awful [View All]

[StarsInHerHair]

Elena Ceausescu is usually assumed to be responsible for two policies which in the 1970s and 1980s, coupled with some of her husband's policies, were disastrous. Romania under the Ceausescu regime outlawed both abortion and birth control, with Elena Ceausescu's urging. Women under the age of 40 were required to have at least four children, later five.
Nikolai Ceausescu's policies, including that of exporting much of the agricultural and industrial output of the country, caused extreme poverty and hardship for most citizens. Families could not support so many children. Women sought illegal abortions, or gave children up to state-run orphanages.

Eventually, parents were paid to give children to the orphanages; Nikolai Ceausescu planned to create a Romanian Workers Army from these orphans. However, the orphanages had few nurses and had food shortages, causing emotional and physical problems for the children. The Ceausescus endorsed a medical answer to the weakness of many children: blood transfusions. The poor conditions in orphanages meant that these transfusions were often done with shared needles, resulting, predictably and sadly, in AIDS being widespread among the orphans. Elena Ceausescu was head of the state health commission which concluded that AIDS could not exist in Romania.
Anti-government demonstrations in 1989 led to a sudden collapse of the Ceausescu regime, and Nikolai and Elena were tried on December 25 by a military tribunal and executed later that day by a firing squad.