Romania Retreats on Reproductive Rights
The sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls, including the right to abortion and family planning methods, have been significantly eroded in Romania, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 73-page report, “‘It’s Happening Even Without You Noticing’: Increasing Barriers to Accessing Sexual and Reproductive Health Care in Romania,” documents that, although these rights are partially protected under Romanian law, in practice women and girls are regularly and systematically thwarted in their efforts to exercise these rights.
“Women and girls in Romania face an increasingly hostile landscape, as they seek to make decisions about their own bodies and health care,” said Song Ah Lee, former Finberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “The Romanian authorities are not only failing to uphold sexual and reproductive health rights but are often enabling efforts to block women and girls from exercising these rights.”
The report is based on 64 interviews, with women who discussed their experiences of seeking sexual and reproductive health care, healthcare providers, and activists fighting for reproductive rights in Romania. Human Rights Watch also met with state officials and religious leaders, reached out to 11 anti-abortion groups operating in Romania, and reviewed documents from government, courts, media, and activists.
Abortion on request is legal until 14 weeks of pregnancy in Romania, but Human Rights Watch found that a growing number of doctors and public hospitals no longer provide the service. Doctors frequently invoke conscientious objection-their own religious beliefs-to turn away patients requiring abortion care. They often do so without referring patients to colleagues or other hospitals, in violation of the patients’ rights. Some entire healthcare facilities refuse to provide abortion care, through formal or informal policies.
Romanian authorities facilitate the work of anti-abortion activists and so-called crisis pregnancy centers that seek to dissuade or prevent women and girls from accessing abortion, using means that are sometimes deceptive and unethical.
Doctors are sometimes mistaken about, or misapply laws and guidelines concerning abortions on request, such as the legal time limit for medication abortion, Human Rights Watch found. Some doctors inappropriately require any patient under age 18 to obtain consent from a parent or guardian, even though adolescents aged 16 and over can legally access sexual and reproductive health care without such consent. These barriers further reduce access to services for women and girls. Some doctors also allege that they can’t secure medical malpractice insurance as a reason to refuse to provide abortions on request, further affecting access to care.
“Being in this situation, it was like all my dreams went out of the window,” Nina said. When she became pregnant at 19, Nina wanted an abortion. Her family doctor told her that his hospital did not provide abortions on request, so she should search online for a provider. When she Googled “abortion,” the first result was “avort.ro.” Not knowing the organization was one that promotes anti-abortion rhetoric and works to prevent pregnant women and girls from going through with having an abortion, Nina called it. “They told me things that sounded sci-fi,” she recalled. “That doctors don’t use anesthesia, that the fetus would be handed to me all sliced up.”
The woman who she spoke to assured Nina that the state and church would help her if she kept the baby. But Nina still wanted an abortion, so the woman scheduled two appointments for her at the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest. The doctor did not show up for either appointment. By then, Nina was already 12 weeks pregnant. Nina tried calling the woman again, but she never answered. After her son was born in 2020, Nina had to postpone her university education, quit her job, and leave the capital due to financial difficulties, she said. “I experienced a major break in the perception that I could do anything. Maybe that is why I can’t bond with my son as well. It was really painful, and it still is.”
Women and girls also face illegal barriers to accessing contraception, and children and young people are harmed by the failure by state authorities to provide age-appropriate, scientifically accurate and comprehensive sexuality education in schools. Women and girls living in rural areas, and people from marginalized communities or with limited financial means, face even greater barriers.
In failing to tackle obstacles to accessing safe abortion, contraception, and sexual and reproductive health information, Romania is violating its human rights obligations under European and international law. Romania should take all necessary steps, including legislative reform, to ensure that comprehensive sexuality education is provided to all students, and that women and girls can exercise their rights to access safe and legal abortion services and contraception in practice.
Romanian authorities should especially focus on ensuring that unmonitored and unregulated processes in the healthcare system, lack of information, availability, or affordability are not impeding women and girls from making informed decisions about their health, Human Rights Watch said.
Romania has a grim history when it comes to sexual and reproductive health rights. In 1966, the then-government adopted Decree 770 which, in the name of driving population growth, imposed draconian bans on access to contraception and abortion. To ensure compliance with Decree 770, that government monitored women’s reproductive status by recruiting informants, usually current or former medical workers or students, to spy on them, and by subjecting them to invasive and humiliating medical checkups in the presence of police.
Because of the regulation and its abusive implementation, women and girls with unwanted pregnancies often had unsafe abortions, leading to the deaths of an estimated 10,000 women and girls, although some experts believe the number to be much higher. By the time Decree 770 was repealed in 1989, Romania had the highest maternal mortality rate in Europe.
“Activists in Romania have fought for decades to restore sexual and reproductive rights in their country,” Song Ah Lee said. “Today they are confronted with an alarming level of backsliding. Romania should remember its own destructive history and fully respect the rights of women and girls.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/04/07/romania-dangerous-rollback-reproductive-rights