Sweden, 1951. Gertrud, 17, lives in a poor family with her father and her younger sisters and brothers. The local authority, discontented with her father’s way of taking care of the house after his wife’s death, decides that the children are to be looked after, and put in different foster homes. Gertrud is too old to be placed in a foster home and the aurhorities decide that she is to be placed in a special home for young women, Odenslund. She soon realizes that the only ticket to freedom is sterilization.