It was equally common for the medical staff to encourage mothers to leave their children in the care of health institutions, claiming that this was best for those children, especially when there were any suspicions of risky home care. According to various studies, some 85% of children placed in shelters and dystrophic wards in 1990 had been sent there on the basis of a physician’s recommendation for institutionalization (The Causes of Child Institutionalization in Romania, 1991).
This “complicity” between the mother and the institutions, fostered by the belief that this is in the child’s best interests, also contributed to the rise in, perpetuation and acceptance of the child abandonment phenomenon in Romania, especially in health institutions.
The pro-natal policy was mainly implemented by Decree 770/1966, prohibiting abortion upon request, and progressively limiting the access of the population to any kind of contraceptives, including condoms. The demographic policy was politically justified, and the outlawing of contraceptives was justified “scientifically”. Politicians and major part of the medical community engaged in aggressive propaganda against family planning. Such counter-propaganda was only possible due to the limited circulation of scientific information during the communist dictatorship, including at academic level.