Socialist Mothers and their Legacies: Migration, Reproductive Health and 'Body-Memory' in Post-Communist Romania

Lorena Anton (1)

1 ADES - Aménagement, Développement, Environnement, Santé et Sociétés

From 1966 to 1989, the communist regime imposed extreme policies of controlled demography in Romania for 'the good of the socialist nation', as it was claimed. Pro-family measures were developed in parallel to the banning of abortion on request and the making of contraception almost inaccessible. Women, forced to seek alternative methods of family planning, rediscovered old fashioned methods of contraception or created new ways of terminating unwanted pregnancies. The consequences of Ceausescu's pronatalism continue to affect Romanian women's reproductive health to this day. Although the legacies of the past are not publically debated in post-communist Romania, their negative effects become visible at both a national and international level when Romanian citizens migrate. Romanian women who migrate to France (to study or work, legally or illegally) are forced to assimilate into and embody another public health system. Intersubjectivities are thus developed between new policies and old habits, in terms of reproductive health practices and healthcare access.

Mots clés: abortion; Romania; social memory; migration

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Lorena Anton. Socialist Mothers and their Legacies: Migration, Reproductive Health and 'Body-Memory' in Post-Communist Romania. 2011. ⟨hal-00785532⟩