Against Their Will

As Renata Plachetkova was rushed into the delivery room for the birth of her second child, a nurse thrust a paper in her face, saying, "You must sign. We will tie off your tubes. You won't have more children." Given no time to consider alternatives, and little explanation of the procedure, Plachetkova consented. "I had no choice," she says. "I had to sign."

A 27-year-old mother of two from Svedlar in eastern Slovakia, Plachetkova is one of some 110 Roma women who allege that they were forcibly sterilized in Slovakia's public hospitals since the 1989 fall of communism....

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