Marta Puskovà was just 23 when she was sterilized. She had recently had her third daughter, and although she and her husband had hoped for a boy, they were happy to see their family expand.
More than three decades later, sitting at the table of a dimly lit restaurant in the little town of Ostrava, in the eastern Czech Republic, Puskovà looks lost in her thoughts. She recalls the social worker who came to her house soon after the birth, urging her to go back to the hospital to get checked up for a blood condition. ‘As soon as I got there, they took my baby to the children’s ward and put me in a room,’ she says. ‘They gave me an injection with a pain killer and anaesthetic and said I had to undergo a surgery – nobody told me of what kind. They had me sign papers without telling me anything.’
