In a misguided effort to enhance economic productivity, Nicolae Ceausescu decreed in 1966 that Romania would develop its “human capital” via a government-enforced mandate to increase the country's population. Ceau escu, Romania's leader from 1965 to 1989, banned contraception and abortions and imposed a “celibacy tax” on families that had fewer than five children. State doctors--the menstrual police--conducted gynecologic examinations in the workplace of women of childbearing age to see whether they were producing sufficient offspring. The birth rate initially skyrocketed. Yet because families were too poor to keep their children, they abandoned many of them to large state-run institutions. By 1989 this social experiment led to more than 170,000 children living in these facilities.