Romanian Chamber of Deputies passes law letting women choose a companion for labour and birth

The vote

On Wednesday, 14 October 2026, the Chamber of Deputies adopted, as the decisional chamber, a bill initiated by USR senator Ruxandra Cibu Deaconu. The text amends and completes Law 46/2003 on patient rights and gives pregnant women the right to dignity and privacy from pregnancy until discharge. It also guarantees a companion of their choice throughout labour, birth and inter-institutional transfer, subject to hygiene, epidemiological and medical safety rules. Public and private maternity units must take organisational or technical measures, including visual separation in the rooms where labour and birth take place.

Cibu Deaconu wrote on Facebook that the bill received 262 votes in favour and none against. She described the vote as unusual, since all parties backed the same text.

No mother in Romania should have to give birth alone anymore.

What the law covers for mothers and newborns

The bill also gives the newborn the right to stay with the mother from birth through the hospital stay, and not to be separated from her except for medical, epidemiological, safety or force majeure reasons recorded in medical documents. Maternity units must organise postnatal care to encourage early mother-newborn contact, breastfeeding and rooming-in, provided safety conditions are met for both. Any restriction of these rights is allowed only in objective situations justified medically or epidemiologically, such as protecting the woman, the newborn, medical staff or other patients. Cibu Deaconu wrote that no maternity unit could refuse a companion for reasons of convenience or lack of space.

The vaccination row

The debate shifted to vaccination during the explanations of the vote. Aurora Tasica-Simu, a deputy not affiliated with any party, congratulated the initiative of the PNL, USR, UDMR and PSD, but advised pregnant women to refuse vaccination of their newborns after birth. She said that during her own caesarean an anaesthetist had tried to persuade her to vaccinate her baby on the first day of life, and that she had resisted. Former health minister Alexandru Rogobete answered from the floor, criticising politicians who give medical advice and anti-vaccine speeches from the parliamentary podium. He said Romania ranks first in the European Union for the number of children who have died of measles, and a deputy from AUR defended Tasica-Simu against him.

Next steps

The bill now goes to President Nicușor Dan for promulgation, the step that would turn it into law. Cibu Deaconu wrote that the law needs nothing beyond promulgation to take effect. The vote came with the dispute over vaccination still unresolved in the chamber's debate record.