Abortion in Romania

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Abortion in Romania is currently legal as an elective procedure during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, and for medical reasons at later stages of pregnancy.^[1] In the year 2004, there were 216,261 live births and 191,000 reported abortions,^[2] meaning that 46% of the 407,261 reported pregnancies that year ended in abortion.

In 2021 an article was published by NPR raising concerns that abortion access is becoming restricted in Romania. During the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2020, the government's published list of services public hospitals were required to perform did not include abortions. This policy pushed women to seek abortion care at private hospitals, where costs were much higher. In April of 2020, the government told public hospitals to resume abortion services, but according to abortion activist Andrada Cilibiu when speaking with NPR, many public hospitals continued to turn patients away. In June 2020 only 55 out of the 134 public hospitals in Romania were providing abortions, and in June 2021, that number dropped all the way down to 28.^[3]

Abortion was also legal on-demand in Romania from 1957 to 1966.^[4] From 1967 to 1990 abortion was severely restricted, in an effort of the Communist leadership to increase the fertility rate of the country; however this resulted in rising mortality rates and a surge in Orphans. After the Romanian Revolution abortion laws were loosened.