In the interwar period, Czechoslovakia also experimented in eugenics. The Nazis intensified genocidal sterilization of Roma. But public attitudes toward Roma speak otherwise. The campaign reached its zenith in the late 1980s, when the state paid Romany women for having the operation. Most Roma live in poor conditions and are unemployed.
Some women say they did it for rent money.
A 1988 Health Ministry decree authorized the payments. Usually it was paid partly in cash and partly in material goods. The provision was canceled shortly after the revolution. The vaguely worded decree makes it impossible to prove the state's intention to financially motivate minority women. It defines payments as financial-hardship grants, not compensation for sterilization.