The important thing is for people to believe in themselves

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Ivana Königsmarková was born in 1953. She is the daughter of Doctor Věra Semmelová (née Šimáňová), her father Edgar Semmel was of Jewish descent, and he had fought at Dunkirk. After grammar school Ivana studied as a women’s health nurse. She was a witness of events in the vicinity of the Radio House on 21 August 1968; she was interrogated by State Security on the suspicion that she had helped prepare her friends’ emigration. She worked as a midwife at the Prague maternity clinic Apolinář for twenty years, from 1994 she was employed as an assistant at a private OB/GYN practice, in 1998 she co-founded the Active Birth Centre in Bulovka Hospital in Prague. She has assisted with hundreds of home births. She is trying to establish the freedom of expecting mothers to choose if they want to give birth at home.