Did anyone notice how pro-life and pro-choice are arbitrary terms? E.g. I'm in favor of free abortions, because I value life and unplanned children willl have a negative effect on it, so I'm pro-life; or, I'm in favor of outlawing abortions, because I think that we should concentrate on making the right choices in situations that lead up to pregnancy, so I'm pro-choice.
I guess "life" and "choice" are just references to things that the respective partisans bring up when arguing. Which would imply that my argument above is wrong: it's not about accurately describing a social situation, but about giving an argument a short name.
Which has a problem of its own. It's limiting. It implies that if you're against abortions, then that's because of the validity of some "life" argument, or the invalidity of some "choice" argument. Over time, it probably makes the debates stupider.
Why give names to arguments (pro-choice, pro-life)? Why not just say pro-abortion, anti-abortion? Because you want to appeal to peoples' preexisting biases? If that's the case, it's a bad attitude towards debate.
The terms aren't arbitrary, they're used and propagated deliberately to turn as social issue into a political one. Using a term like "pro-life" creates a false dichotomy which leads to the false and simplistic conclusion that if you oppose pro-life then you must be anti-life.
> Why not just say pro-abortion, anti-abortion?
Because almost no one is "pro-abortion". It's a horrible and traumatic experience to go through and no one is happy to have one. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have the option to do it. That's why pro-choice works better - it's just more descriptive of the actual issue.
The term "pro-life" may creates a false dichotomy when put in that way, but if you think at it as the crux of the argument not so much. Case in point you kind of miss it in your last sentence and have it in the opposite: if a foetus is a life (i.e. a person) from day one, then it follows women shouldn't have a choice (because it's not their body anymore, in that context, like a weirdness of nature that a different person with normal rights inhabits a mother's body). They are not saying it will lead to a happy experience either to raise that child, but that's an unfortunate consequence of the "life" argument, hence "life vs choice". Edit: But I agree it's not a good way to frame the debate, "Person at conception vs Person at X weeks/months" would be more relevant to each side position IMO.
> if a foetus is a life (i.e. a person) from day one, then it follows women shouldn't have a choice
This is not the case. Even if the foetus is a human person, body autonomy tells us that no person should be forced to give up their own bodily well being in ensure the survival of someone else.
Let's say that a person needs a kidney or they will day, would it be OK to force the only compatible donor to donate his because he can survive without it? If not, how is it fine to force a woman to go through nine months of pregnancy? Pregnancy and birth can be harmful to the body, and even put the mother's life at risk.
It's common to say that the "pro-life vs. pro-choice" debate is all about whether the foetus is a person of not, but that's a misdirect. You can resolve that question and still find yourself trying to solve essentially the trolley problem.
> It's common to say that the "pro-life vs. pro-choice" debate is all about whether the foetus is a person of not, but that's a misdirect.
I would say exact opposite. It is the key question, because if there is no fetus-person claim, the whole issue is moot as there is no entity to which pregnant person has moral responsibility.
But if we assume a fetus is a person with all personal rights, it is just clash of rights and freedoms of two persons, which may turn out both ways based on relative valuations of these rights in a society. Personal autonomy is a strong card, but there are many cases where it is restricted to protect life of others (involuntary treatment of mentally ill or forced isolation of infected).
Also, the case is stronger as (with the exception of rape) parents are mostly responsible for conception of child. One can say that it was not their decision and contraceptions can fail, but the same can be said for car accidents.
OTOH, the fetus-person position is here only because it is a forced religious idea on secular society. So it is much more clear-cut to just reject fetus-person proposition on secular grounds. (We already did something similar for braindead cases that are biologically alive.) Without that 'pro-life' position has no standing. By abandoning fetus-person debate and making the debate about personal autonomy, the 'pro-choice' side just unnecessary weakened their case.
This question is essentially unsolvable from a philosophical point of view. Laws and people will take their stand about when human life beings, but there is no objective definition that will solve this. Making the debate about an unsolvable question makes the debate unsolvable. This makes it very difficult to change existing laws. This "debate" favors whichever side the current laws already favor.
I agree that i may be unsolvable. But that is also point for 'pro-choice'. It is not symmetrical debate. It is debate about whether state is allowed to restrict some personal behavior.
In liberal society restricting personal freedom requires strong claim of necessity. Therefore it is a burden of 'pro-life' side to make such strong claim. As such claim requires fetus-person claim, the 'pro-life' side would need to show that (or at least show that it is universally hold position in society).
> This is not the case. Even if the foetus is a human person, body autonomy tells us that no person should be forced to give up their own bodily well being in ensure the survival of someone else.
Exactly. I think it helps to steer the debate towards the assumption that the fetus is a human being since it exists. The mother does not have the right to kill it as it would be murder. However, the mother has the right to stop her pregnancy since it is her body. Now the kick is: These two statements are not contradictory! If the fetus is viable then his life can be saved by the doctors, otherwise it will die. In either case, it is not the (legal) responsibility of the mother.
Of course, the mother would be probably a douchebag if she tries to interrupt a pregnancy at 8 months, but that's a different issue.
Not taking sides, but I don't think it is so black and white if you frame it like that.
A newborn baby is pretty much helpless and needs its mother/other. If we go just by that, it means a new mother does nothing wrong if they leave their kid outside in the sun for 5 days until it dies. After all, no-one should give their 'bodily' well being. Yes, you can give him for adoption, etc, but by the logic here it means if a mother just leaves their kids to starve, not kill them directly, but not doing 'motherly' things, it is ok, after all, they aren't fully responsible.
(again, not taking sides in the pro-life/pro-choice argument, just stating it isn't black or white)
I think yours is a very good analogy, and it really holds. If a mother has a baby that, for whatever reasons, cannot take care of, then she has the right to give the baby for adoption (or give the custody to the father). If she kills the baby (e.g., by neglect), then she is of course guilty of murder. An abortion is a very similar case, she cannot take care of the fetus inside her body, and she assigns the care of the fetus to the doctors that perform the abortion. These doctors may or may not be able to keep the fetus alive. That way, you can be pro-choice and pro-life at the same time (albeit limited by the current status of medical technology).
EDIT: to clarify, I'm not really unbiased about that and I do take sides: I think that people have the right to control their bodies, and thus women have the right to have abortions. (I also think that abortion is wrong when there's no risk of physical trauma for the woman, but hey, people have the right to do wrong things!)
> Let's say that a person needs a kidney or they will day, would it be OK to force the only compatible donor to donate his because he can survive without it? If not, how is it fine to force a woman to go through nine months of pregnancy?
Thats a pretty terrible analogy. Getting pregnant is not something you cannot avoid. That would assume that people have no responsibility in their current condition.
I come from a country were people are still often denied abortions after being raped, so maybe my perspective is a biased (though the laws say they should be allowed). But even in other cases, I assume if a person is looking for an abortion they didn't expect to get pregnant, so I can hardly say that they chose to get pregnant. If someone gets pregnant because of lack of education or faulty birth control products, I really find it hard to say they are entirely responsible for the pregnancy.
It is entirely their responsiblity. There is a reason why most societies/religions encourages only sex after marriage. To engage in sex before marriage then blame the birth control products or lack of an education doesn't really add up.
The rape pregency is a different matter. Before safe abortions the mother had the baby and treated it as an innocent child. Some would be given up for adoption. Some societies force the rapist to pay. No society killed the baby when it was born.
My girlfriend had an IUD, tied with vasectomy as the best form of contraception.
She got pregnant anyway. The nurses were so incredulous, they tested her four times, said it was impossible, and finally gave her a blood test to confirm.
We caught it very early, and it was ectopic. Her doctor said if she didn't abort it, she would likely die. Even a healthy pregnancy is more likely to kill you than an abortion in the first trimester.
Anyway, my point is that none of this is your or the govt's business. It was between her and her doctor. Someone can be 100% responsible and still be in a regrettable medical situation, and no one should have the authority to say, "You need to die or risk dying for this cluster of cells."
It was a likely-fatal medical condition. It was impossible to bring to term and produce a healthy baby.
"Caught" implies that we discovered the pregnancy before it progressed into a more dangerous phase. "It" refers to the pregnancy.
Humans may want to see meaning in certain rapidly-growing clusters of cells, but that doesn't make them less dangerous if they're growing in the wrong part of the body.
Large majorities of arbortions nowadays have nothing to do with rape (while the right for abortion was fought using that argument originally). Its by far convenience abortions.
> Person at conception vs Person at X weeks/months
Except that some pro-choice advocates admit that it is a human life being killed and still insist it is good and necessary. That and most of the rest of the pro-choice activists would never accept being forced into making a determination on when they believe life begins. They don't care when life begins. They care about not restricting abortion.
Edit: I should have read other comments here first. As you can see, many pro-choice people are perfectly willing to acknowledge that they are willing to allow abortion even though it is a person. In other words, actively killing your child if you don't want to support them.
But "life" and "person" are two different things. Why not call themselves pro-person? I think it's because then you have to discuss when person-hood start.
In general, "pro-life" people are not pro-life, they are pro-soul, but they know instinctively that's a debate they can't win, so they change the name. It's, in my opinion, a big, big hypocrisy.
> if a foetus is a life (i.e. a person) from day one, then it follows women shouldn't have a choice
Living people making unwanted intrusions into one’s body, even where one has previously consented, can generally be forcibly stopped from that intrusion. There are basically no circumstances where being alive itself gives someone the kind of claim on someone else’s body necessary to sustain a fetus. So, no, the conclusion you present does not follow from the assumption that the fetus is a living human person with all the rights and privileges usually associated with that status. It still requires assumption of novel, sui generis, privileges.
> The term "pro-life" may creates a false dichotomy when put in that way, but if you think at it as the crux of the argument not so much.
Even then, not really. Otherwise Pro-Life adherents would push policies that reduce the number of abortions overall—like better access to and education about birth control—over policies that don’t—like making abortions illegal. Instead, they demonstrate that their goal isn’t to actually reduce the number of abortions overall.
The counter-argument I've heard to that is even if a fetus is a life (debatable), "pro-lifers" are requisitioning a person's body against their will to sustain that life. Which is inconsistent with what we as a society would do in any other similar situation. For example, organ donation. We don't even assume consent to use the organs of dead bodies, let alone force live donors to surrender their spare kidneys.
If you believe women should be able to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term, or not, you are pro-abortion. Lots of people are pro-abortion. Futhermore, lots of people recognise they are pro-abortion and are perfectly willing, if not encourage, the label. Maybe this is taboo in your upbringing and social circle but to make the claim that "almost no one" is pro-abortion is beyond wrong.
Your local puritanical propaganda is winning, it would seem. I'm european. I see the conversation as explicitly pro-abortion and anti-abortion. Now and then the anti-abortionists try to americanize and call themselves pro-life but few buy it.
> Because almost no one is "pro-abortion". It's a horrible and traumatic experience to go through and no one is happy to have one. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have the option to do it.
I am pro-abortion, because I understand that it's a traumatic experience, which nonetheless can be very desirable given some circumstances. If you're trying to side-step the fact that no-one ideally would have an abortion, you're just opening yourself up to counter-arguments attacking exactly that, and that's dumb, because you've detracted the debate from the true point (from a pro-abortion viewpoint) – sometimes it's a necessary sacrifice.
... does NOT mean pro-choice. It means "limit the ability to choose in favor of the right choices".
I, personally, like both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" names. These names represent underlying positions well. These names also have a good balance [between brevity, clarity, and highlighting key differences].
I don't like that only the woman has a choice. If they choose to continue the pregnancy against the father's wishes, the father will be forced to pay child support. If they choose to stop the pregnancy against the father's wishes, the child is killed and the father is left without it.
Whoa, this is about bodily autonomy, not economic inconvenience. You would subjugate women’s bodies for the economic concerns of males? That’s a completely nonsensical and abhorrent view.
The "Economic inconvenience" is forced labour. We only feel morally okay with it because men are disposable, and women are a protected class.
I understand the argument that it's wrong to force a woman to carry and bear a child. It seems, though, that the lesser evil of forcing a man to give money to that woman shouldn't be allowed under similar ethical reasoning.
(I.e. if it's okay to kill a foetus, it's okay to economically disavow it.)
Yes, as I said: men are disposable, and women are cherished.
Assuming no rape/nonconsent in either scenario:
Male impregnates a female and regrets it: too bad, you're held responsible and have to help take care of the offspring.
Female gets impregnated and regrets it: you're not held responsible, you're allowed to kill the offspring and don't have to help take care of it if you don't want to.
Chivalry never died, in a strange sort of way. I'm not complaining about this; I just find it interesting to point it out.
I don't think this is the 'vilest' of misogyny, and I think the hyperbole does a disservice to women.
This isn't really about rape; it's about the legal power asymmetry in entirely consensual sex. I'm not complaining about this, or advocating any policy positions, I just find it interesting to think about out loud.
Your reaction is interesting, too. Why do you associate the gp post with misogyny?
Because even in the case of entirely consensual sex, at the end of the day only one party is faced with important decisions concerning their own body. To try to insert non-physical concerns of a third party into that calculus is an order-of-magnitude type mistake in moral reasoning, and as such, shocking and unacceptable.
This post is about phrases and their connotations. It adds nothing to this discussion. It seems to be deliberately posted merely to provoke argument, or to distract from the main article (which it will do if people let it).
I think one reason why pro abortion is "pro choice" is because it actually involves making a choice. Not aborting and giving "life" to a newborn is the default selection and doesn't involve making choice.
Also recommended: “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days“, a 2007 fiction film about a college student in 1980s Romania seeking an illegal abortion. The film won multiple prizes including Cannes Palme d’Or.
“Pro-life” Americans would be well advised to see the movie, as a reminder of what would quickly be happening in their own country if a complete ban on abortions were to happen.
And by the same director, an excellent film on Romanian social life, Graduation, which is definitely a more modern film about a girl's parents trying to find her a better future outside of Romania. I think I enjoyed it more than 4 Months.
I have often wondered why the 1989 revolution was so violent in comparison with the rest of the warsaw pact, but learning about experiments like that help provide background.
(anyone know how much lead there was in romanian petrol circa 1969?)
I wouldn't take the outright killings of the Ceausescus as a sign of the Romanian people being so unusually more violent than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The decision to kill Ceausescu and his wife was taken by a strata of government officials under him, because they wanted to seize power for themselves. In this sense, the Romanian revolution of 1989 was a coup d'etat and we are just lucky that the outcome was eventually a representative democracy and not another dictatorship.
While the Ceausescus were hated, it is definitely not a given that popular discontent would have led to their deaths had it not been for that cabal that hastily arranged the trial and executions.
The line about the coup d'etat is bullshit, stop spreading nonsense.
Ceaușescu was killed because the terrorists wouldn't give up otherwise, the terrorists being suspected to be the old secret police, which also wreaked havoc in Timișoara.
Interesting, but I wasn't even thinking of the Ceausescus in particular. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989#Romania it says
"over 1,000 people died" (one link away says "Death(s) 689–1,290") which seems very high compared with neighbouring Bulgaria and Hungary.
In the article it states that Izidor was not an unwanted child, but got ill when very young, got hospitalised and the family just left him in the hospital and stopped visiting.
Where does it say that? I might have missed it. Abandoning a child for having a leg deformity doesn't strike me as if he was wanted much.
Anyway, the poor conditions in the orphanages and children hospitals were a result of overcrowding and this happened due to Ceaușescu's policies that turned Romania into a baby factory. And there was also the issue that children with disabilities were incompatible with communism's "new man" ideal, so the orphanages for children with disabilities were genuine horrors.
That is what the birth parents told him, it's near the end of the article. Hard to know if they were telling the truth, but he was not abandoned at birth.
Maybe not the case here, but I heard of a similar story from another country. As a baby he got his arm badly burned and the parents left him at the hospital because they couldn't pay for treatment.
there’s also a whole generation of unwanted babies (me included) that have been kept by the families. that does not mean that all of them had a bad life, but there was a huge impact over the (young) parents life. i still support abortion, though. the women should have total control over their own bodies and should have the right to decide when and if they can handle this.
Not only that, but it's a general lesson in what scale of human suffering can happen due to government overreach and attempting to effect social change from the top.
Leaving out autocracy, yes they can. If you had a childhood like some, you'd understand that parents are not always disneyfied cuddle-machines you may have experienced. In those cases the state under some circumstances can (can; definitely not will, it depends on the state) do better.
More widely I wish people (like you) would not generalise their reasonably happy childhoods onto others. I'm glad you had what others do not, but don't assume it's a universal.
It’s true that there are some very bad parents. It’s also true that no state run system has been as good as biological or adoptive parents for the vast majority of children... even those with negligent parents.
Only in extreme cases does one bad (taking a child away from parent figures) justify removing them and putting them in a state run system (another bad). There’s certainly a place for that, but it’s at the extremes.
Many would like to claim that the state should raise kids. That’s a stance that does great harm to parents and children alike.
If you're interested in an answer, read the rather long article. Sometimes it's good to leave the comfortable bubble most of us live in.
It says that in the case of Romania, warehousing children was a disaster on the scale of Dachau in WW2.
Psychology textbooks had to be rewritten afterwards as this level of child neglect was never contemplated - no biological or custodial parents to pattern their behavior.
One observation I'll make is that although adoption is considered a noble act in the US, many other countries consider it be throwing your baby away to be exploited.
People that I've talked to in the Philippines and Indonesia visibly recoiled when I mentioned the word "adoption", so there must be an unfortunate history there.
I know that of course this Romanian example isn't. We used to send a truck full of help for the Romanian kids two decades back every year or so.
But that is not proof it can't work, just like how one bad parent isn't proof all parents are bad.
But a skilled government can gather more data and insights than any one individual, so it stands too reason they could produce a program that's better than what many or most parents can come up with on their own. In fact, that is precisely how modern day education ages 4-16 started out. Near universal literacy is one of its fruits. Why not more?
Then what is primary and secondary schooling about? While not perfect, it emerges from bureaucracy and it does achieve things that many parents did not (such as literacy).
I would argue that secondary schooling is worse the more bureauceacy is involved, and mostly exists as a prison for kids/young adults so society doesn't have to do anything with them.
Primary schooling is fine, as long as everyone comes out literate and numerate.
I would say schools in general are more about warehousing kids than learning, although some kids do end up learning things they wouldn't have otherwise (while others end up not being able to learn things they would have learned otherwise).
Related to this discussion, several secular intentional communities in the US have attempted communal child raising and as far as I am aware all stopped after finding it to be worse than having parents be primary caregivers. Twin Oaks is the one I remember by name if anyone wants to go looking for info; I know their experience has been written about in books, I don't know if there is anything online. I am sure there were at least two other such attempts but I can't remember the communities right now. It seems kids really need at least one and not too many primary caregivers.
Foster care in the few states I know about in the US has serious problems. The interests of governments are not usually aligned with the interests of humans.
Parents do learn from the experiences of other parents and people everywhere are always looking for ways to do that better, but there are enough things that just don't work well that being too organized about it is likely to be counterproductive.
You should read the article first. What you're saying is the opposite of what the article is about, which is thousands of infants left in state orphanages.
OK, indeed, the slogan "the state can take better care of your child than you can" does not in fact apply to the atrocity that the article covers. That slogan is classical Soviet-style double speak.
> One observation I'll make is that although adoption is considered a noble act in the US, many other countries consider it be throwing your baby away to be exploited.
Something being a noble act does not mean that it is normal, in the sense that it is a common occurence. In fact, the opposite is usually true.
There were just so many abandoned children that there were too few people willing to adopt them. Most people prefer to conceive their own children rather than adopting. Eve of those that want to adopt, they will often conceive a child before feeling ready to go through the adoption process, and few people can afford more than one child.
Maybe the difference is that the Americans consider adopting (receiving) a child to be noble where as the Filipinos consider giving your own child to adoption negativly? I don't think a lot of Americans consider giving their children to adoption as noble.
Wife gave birth to our first son ~8 years ago in Romania at a public hospital in Bucharest. Not only the experience was harrowing for her (too much shit to go through and most of it sounds like a bad joke), but yes, this still happens today - they take the baby away from the mom immediately and you only get to see it between specific times during the day.
In my opinion the article is way to nostalgic. I have seen the images of the child houses. It was complete horror and super inhumane. I can handle a lot of bad stuff but those images have been haunting me for a long time.
Very very sad and I am happy a lot has changed since then.
A question always pops into my mind, reading about the effects of this kind of deprivation on children. At what age do love and affection transition from an inherent need to a frivolous want? From something it’s unconscionable for a person to lack, to something where Hollywood is castigated for conditioning people to expect it? Where is the developmental cut line?
> Hollywood is castigated for conditioning people to expect it?
Hollywood is (rightfully) castigated for setting unrealistic beauty standards and expectations for young men and women, and for misrepresenting how healthy romance and relationships work.
Love is out there for everyone (...I hope), but a good chunk of our media influences suggest and imply that men should have an expectation that women will automatically find them as an attractive partner or reinforce that they’re somehow “entitled” to a sexual experience - these broken expectations form the basis of many (but not all) of the misogynistic anger that fuels the Incel movement.
> but a good chunk of our media influences suggest and imply that men should have an expectation that women will automatically find them as an attractive partner or reinforce that they’re somehow “entitled” to a sexual experience...
Why do you focus on men? It seems to me that all humans expect to be "entitled" to sexual experiences.
Hollywood and most industries don't set the standards, they use them to attract more people. Not everything we do/like/want comes from Hollywood, that's a stupid over simplification that some people use for their own peace of mind. The world is a very complex place where people prefer simple explanations to complex problems rather than admin they don't know.
How does the media suggest that women will automatically find men attractive? My experience says otherwise. You have to be fit, have success in life, have money, have a beautiful smile, which is NOT what incels are. All these "requisites" for a woman to find you attractive can be explained also from a biological point of view.
> Not everything we do/like/want comes from Hollywood, that's a stupid over simplification that some people use for their own peace of mind.
This is also an oversimplification. The problem is that the movie and ad industries strongly reinforce and popularize and some standards.
And export them to the whole world.
> How does the media suggest that women will automatically find men attractive? My experience says otherwise. You have to be fit, have success in life, have money, have a beautiful smile, which is NOT what incels are.
I agree and this is also part of the problem. Pushing some arbitrary standards onto men is also harmful.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people feel they insecure about themselves and angry about society.
Sometimes this insecurity and anger fuels the sale of cosmetics, gym memberships, clothing and dubious "self-help" books. Sometimes it gets uglier.
> All these "requisites" for a woman to find you attractive can be explained also from a biological point of view.
Please hold on on the strong biological determinism. It's largely refuted by geneticists and anthropologist. Reality is way more complex.
IMO, the movies and shows aren’t conditioning people to expect it. The writers are writing way outside their experience and producing a mass genre of wish fulfillment. There is a lot of stalker-like behavior in love shows and instead of calling the cops the victim falls in love. Traditionally attractive personality and appearance traits are often turned on their head so that the writer’s avatar can get laid. Many female characters are written by men and it shows. Plus, if the script just imitated life, it wouldn’t be interesting.
The result is that a lot of people probably feel like they’ve been had. They’ve been telling themselves that they can or should do things that scare away their love interests and end up with a relationship. They want to believe in a special soul mate for everyone. The reality is that sex and relationships are both easier and less fulfilling than they’ve come to believe.
While the drama that happened there can't be denied, it is tiresome to see Romania in 2020 still presented in this light.
I've been browsing hn.algolia.com for articles posted in the past year about various countries and I think Romania wins hands down on bad image. Is Romania the bogeyman of civilisation? Well, supposedly Dracula comes from here too!
I guess it's because a lot of the shit that's happened is reasonably modern by other country's standards (at least in countries that have taken as many forward leaps as Romania has). You have such change in 30 years, but also even more change held back by politics and still vast wage disparity.
It's in an odd limbo where some elements are well in front of many countries (like connectivity, almost unparralled) whereas others, like poor infrastructure (like that stunt of the businessman building more highway the government) and a perception of the politics still being ruled by pandering to pensioners.
Were it not for Brexit and my almost certain inability to get RO citizenship any time soon, we'd probably have moved out for a few years as things will still come on leaps and bounds.
Currently our image is mostly determined by the gypsies spread all around the EU. One year ago when I was in Spain, people looked me very differently, depending if I introduced myself as a romanian or a hungarian (I am a hungarian living in romania)
I'm a Romanian and I actually love my country, but this article is more about communist Romania or at most the Romania of the 90s and we shouldn't be in denial about past or even current problems.
Kind of off-topic but it strikes me how 'tl;dr' has replaced usage of 'summary' in more contexts than I would have expected. Here perhaps feels a bit out of keeping given the subject matter.
This is a brilliant but absolutely heartbreaking article. It is so sad to think of all the children who have had their lives changed by such cruellness.
I don’t understand why the lady who took him home refused to take him back after he mistakenly said he wanted to return to work with her. Was she so annoyed with the little child because she thought he rejected her that she would refuse to help him any further?
At that point they were at the gate, it's not clear from the article, but I assumed that the orphanage authorities wouldn't permit that, rather than Onisa.
I think you're misunderstanding. When they were at her home she asked if he wanted to stay at her home or come to work with her. It was at the gate that he realised his mistake. As to why she just didn't refuse to take him... Well, I guess that could be called kidnapping. Obviously I don't know for sure but I would presume she was giving him the option of staying with her or going back, but didn't realise he wouldn't understand that "going to work" with her would mean going back. We'll never know for sure I guess.
this is absolutely tragic through and through. thousands of children grow up for in neglected, disgustingly unhygienic homes only more many of them to never fully "recover" (in whatever sense of the word one chooses)
And the list goes on. It will be 2200 and Romanians will still blame it on communism. Even here you can see many are trying to bury rampant corruption and discrimination. It is so common in that country that the society will instead try and hide facts only to sugar coat things.
Related: no mention in that article of notorious (Vancouver B.C.) Kayla Bourque, who once studied criminal law purportedly to better accomplish the future murder of a homeless person, plus other sociopathic behaviors ...
What they won't tell you is how many healthy children were bought for a few grand each by Americans and Canadians who flooded Romania after the '89 revolution. They were all outside those terrible orphanages.
This foreign adoption lobby was so powerful that the US government pressured Romanian authorities to keep allowing the black market of no-red-tape foreign adoptions after the 2001 ban: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05BUCHAREST1173_a.html
Arguably international adoptions are a good thing, given the proper checks in place to ensure those children aren't adopted into slavery.
There are currently tens of thousands of abandoned children in Romania that nobody wants to adopt. And many of Romania's orphanages are still terrible.
And your last sentence isn't a "fact", but an unsupported allegation. For it to be a fact you'd need actual proof, instead of links from shitty journals.
Can you give me proof that Iliescu called the miners into Bucharest twice after the fall of Ceausescu and beat the shit out of people for the sole reason that they were walking on the streets? What is the proof that you require when we're talking about the current president? What constitutes proof? A conviction in court?...then, Iliescu is innocent even though the common knowledge in this country IS (notice the caps) that he and a few others were responsible for those atrocities in the early 90s.
A mere Google search reveals more than 20 newspapers supporting the claim that he was somewhat involved in shady business with children - heck there are even filmed investigations with multiple people/families claiming on camera that he glued the offer with the demand.
> Can you give me proof that Iliescu called the miners into Bucharest twice after the fall of Ceausescu and beat the shit out of people for the sole reason that they were walking on the streets?
Yes, because he did that on national television, congratulating the miners afterwards for their civic spirit. Really poor analogy btw.
Absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence dude, this is obvious. But fact of the matter is you made an allegation that is not supported by evidence.
If we are talking about what constitutes proof, I can tell what isn't proof ... proof isn't a link from a journal guilty of yellow journalism and of spreading false news, that doesn't cite any credible source, an article written just before the presidential elections from 2014, an obvious hit piece.
Don't link to such junk and I won't pick on you for doing so.
I just love it when there is so much crime and corruption in Romania, that people dont argue over complex topics - they argue over who is the least criminal.
i know - just amazed at the state of affairs. we have to argue over who steals less to the point where romanias president - a proven human trafficker and cheat - is actually decent compared to other candidates.
why have we started downvoting the comments we don’t like? how does this improve the quality of the discussion? all he said is true, there were children “purchased” by families that really wanted them. is this ok? they do have a much better life, most of them at least, but are we ok with buying people just because it’s for the good? i honestly don’t know the answer as i have no data regarding what happened with them afterwards (i really hope they got into good families). and please don’t be a pedant, i am well aware that they had no price tags, but they have been adopted through bribe and political influence.
> but are we ok with buying people just because it’s for the good?
I will tell you my simple answer for this: Yes. If in the end the results are better for humanity as whole, I can tell you, I, personally, am fine with buying people for money and even with other, even LESS moral means. I think we should not let our sense of morality stay in the way of what could improve things. I know it sound horrible, heartless and imoral, but there are plenty of cases along history when taking the moral high ground led to worse outcomes for everyone involved.
I will tell you the reason why he's downvoted. His talking points were based on mostly nationalistic sentiment and used as a talking point in the Romanian elections and politics for a LONG time and by a lot of self-interested people. There is a lot of background to the national context here that's hard to explain, but for example, last 2 election cycles, our current president, Klaus Johannis, was being painted by the opposition as a child trafficker because sometime in the 90's assisted with an adoption of a child by a canadian couple. They tried paining him as a child trafficker and promoting obvious lies, such that the children were sold so that they would harvest their organs. Really egregious stuff.
They basically fan the flames of the "us, the great Romania" against the "evil and manipulative West that is holding us down" that was planted _very_ deep in the Romania psyche by the communist regime. I assume most downvotes came from Romanians, of witch, I assume, there are many more on HN than one would believe.
Can't say about "downvoting the comments we don't like", but downvoting for disagreement has always been allowed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 As siblings have demonstrated, it's not hard to find something disagreeable in gp, and it's debatable whether "all he said is true" (the general observation about "purchases" is true AFAIK, more specific accusations aren't clear).
i know it’s allowed, but it has the very important side effect of hiding the opinions that we disagree with. i would keep the downvote for low quality comments, spam... this sort of stuff.
> why have we started downvoting the comments we don’t like?
Something about human nature...? there is a downvote button there and it feels empowering (?) and satisfying (?) to see someone you disagree with go grey
Yet Romanians love their current president - i yet have to understand why such preference for criminal leaders in that country. Is it a reflection of the Romanian society? Scamming, petty crime, corruption, and generally speaking cheating are so common that it seems like selling babies for profit doesn't even bother people. Apparently human trafficking is nowadays done with the help of local authorities, and Romanians barely care about it.
Not surprised. To this day respect for human life in Romania is low - human trafficking and rampant racism are part an parcel of life in that country. In Cluj Napoca for instance, a notoriously corrupt city, people of gipsy background are not even allowed in public administration buildings and their children are frequently sold as modern day slaves. Withe the blessing of local police forces of course. Yet Romanians couldnt care less.
The treatment of Roma people (Gypsies) is a great stain on contemporary Europe. They face massive institutional racism everywhere on the continent, from Finland to Romania to France.
The Roma example is interesting. You have a people who are different based on religion (not really racism unless you consider them a race). The values that make them different are in conflict with the laws in the society they choose to live. Stealing is perceived differently and this conflict results in a higher % of Roma people imprisioned.
How do you deal with stealing being acceptable for one group of people. Do you allow this because not allowing is racist? Because that's where we end up with your comment.
Yeah you have no clue how bad it is in Romania tho. There still is actual slavery with people being bought and sold and public places where they are not allowed in. Including schools and hospitals. There are frequent reports of them being rounded up and beaten and a walk around places where they live - see Cluj pata Rat - will give you a sense of the scale.
I don't think that he is a troll. I just recently seen a shocking report with people kept in sclavary. It was in a Hungarian gypsy town, but I can inagine that the situation can be very similar here in Romania in some towns.
Unfortunately slavery hasn't totally disappered anywhere in the world. In W. Europe this happens with (illegal) immigrants or other vulnerable group exploited by an organized group.
his reaction is entirely in line with what 99% or romanians will say. it is a constant state of denial. absolutely shocking. i prefer not to tolerate such abuse nor hide it to sugarcoat it.
What you are trying to say is that slavery is systematic in RO, which is not the case nor it's tolerated by the authorities.
Yes there were cases that shocked the public were people were forced, but those are isolated and not tolerated. It's like saying that's a common practice for Austrians to hold in their basement teenage girls.
I'm not gonna respond to any of your replys because it's pointless.
yeah racism human trafficking and slavery are not just tolerated but are actually practiced by Authorities in romania - otherwise it couldn't happen in every county and every city of Romania and there wouldnt be reports about it on a weekly basis. unlike your example about basement teenagers in austria discovered every decade in romania it happens every so often and romania wouldnt be an absolute leader on the topic. there wouldnt be ads for prostitution next to almost every university either. there is no amount of hiding to make that country look good you can do to change facts. i have plenty of acquaintances working both in the police and government to know the scale is far beyond what you delude yourself with. and there are plenty of statistics available to prove my claims but you conveniently ignore. recently an organised clan what not just acquitted but also given back their illegal arsenal of weapons much to the shock of the british authorities whom sent the case to romania. think the judge was stupid? think again. and stop hiding these facts - it doesnt do you a favour it just shows you are happy to protect a culture of crime and corruption so deeply entrenched in every day life that you have either become immune or are part of it even if just by normalising it.
I could give evidence in court if i had the opportunity. Everyone knows it, but in Romania people prefer not to talk about it - apparently thats unpatriotic. Almost every building project in that city is a result of bribery to allow sub par quality. Down town restaurant regularly pay bribe to health and safety inspectors. Public hospital doctors take bribe or they will let you die. And so on. Office workers may be ignorant of these facts but pretty much any honest business owner will tell you this. The city looks good, compared to the rest of Romania. Want to buy a property, Just declare a low value and pay the rest under the table. There are people who meant to recover communist confiscated land - the mayor’s friends have made sure that judges push trials so far in the future that the right to do so expires, and the list goes on. But hey gotta make it look good for foreign investors so they can bring over outsourcing jobs.
I mean, the bribery is common, but wouldn't have expected Cluj to be much worse than any other city (and seems to actually be better than many others). I've also seen plenty of people talking about the corruption, although less about the local companies and more about the ravaging of the forests by Austrian and German logging companies (but not really from a patriotic angle).
yeah what happened few years ago is romanians voted in a nationalist government. its infamously corrupt media owning friends started to promote the idea that corruption is not as bad as it seems and not worse than in germany or france. yet i will take anyone posting here on a tour to see corruption on a scale you have never seen before - almost as if it were by design - to support my claims.
yup - they all say “it happens everywhere” as if that makes it ok. yet corruption in romania js at such a scale i am surprised it is a member of the eu. most west europeans would be amazed at what their money is spent on through eu funding.
This was a huge social experiment the pro-life vs pro-choice debaters can learn from.
If you want to see a documentary on the subject this is a good one: https://youtu.be/ZgZJ-IV8Et0