Coercive Sterilisation of Roma Women

State-Controlled Reproductive Violence 

Beginning in the late 1960s, Czechoslovak authorities introduced population‑control measures targeting Roma communities under the guise of social integration and public health. Roma women were disproportionately subjected to sterilization practices promoted by state institutions as a way to reduce what officials labeled “socially undesirable” reproduction. Procedures were often carried out without informed consent or under coercion, including threats of losing benefits, housing, or custody of children. Many women were pressured to sign consent forms during childbirth or medical emergencies, when genuine consent was impossible. Persisting into the late socialist period, these practices reflected entrenched antigypsyist assumptions and functioned as structural violence aimed at controlling Roma bodies and reproduction, leaving lasting physical and psychological harm. Evidence on coercive sterilization in Slovakia during the socialist period comes primarily from post-1989 investigations and survivor testimonies, which document that practices established under the federal Czechoslovak policy continued in Slovak hospitals.