Forced sterilization, Greenlandic women demand compensation
A group of 67 Greenlandic women, who had IUDs inserted without their consent, are demanding a compensation payment of EUR 40,000 each from the Danish government.
Between 1965 and 1975, thousands of Inuit women and girls in Greenland had an IUD inserted without their consent or that of their parents, and sometimes without even being informed of this procedure.
The purpose of this practice was to control the island’s birth rate. An estimated 4,500 women and teenagers were subjected to this forced contraception, representing half of the island’s women in their childbearing years. The youngest were only thirteen at the time.
The scandal first broke in 2022, with Naja Lyberth’s testimony in the pages of the Greenlandic magazine Arnanut, recounting how, when she was just 14, she and her classmates were sent to hospital to have an IUD inserted, without her consent or her parents’ knowledge. Now aged 60, the Nuuk-based psychologist is demanding financial compensation from the Danish government. She is joined in this claim by 66 other women whose letter was sent to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on October 2. They are seeking DKK 300,000 (approx. 40,000 euros) for each of them in compensation for the damage they have suffered, i.e. a total of over DKK 20 million (over 2.5 million euros). Failure to do so could result in legal action.
An inquiry commission, set up by the Greenlandic and Danish governments, took up the case last May, but is not expected to deliver its conclusions before 2025. This is far too long for the women: “We don’t want to wait for the results of the investigation,” Ms Lyberth recently told AFP. “We’re getting older, the oldest among us, who had IUDs in the 60s, were born in the 40s and are approaching 80. We want action now.”
Estimates by the Greenland government show that by the end of 1969, just four years after the program began, 35% of women in their reproductive years had been fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD). The IUDs were implanted by Danish doctors, as part of a Danish government-led project to reduce the island’s birth rate, even though Greenland had ceased to be a colony of Denmark in 1953.
Although the practice is supposed to have ended in the 1970s, evidence suggests that IUD insertion without the patient’s consent has continued beyond that date. A young woman recently told the BBC that she had been implanted with a contraceptive in 2014 without her consent.
Inserting an IUD, or administering any other means of contraception, without the consent of the patient, or of her legal representatives if she is a minor, is a completely illegal practice and constitutes a violation of basic human rights.
In addition to the consequences on mental health, IUDs have in some cases had serious repercussions on health and fertility, sometimes even leading to the removal of the uterus. Medical follow-up, although necessary for this type of contraception, was inadequate. Abdominal pain, infections and fertility problems were commonplace for many women. Furthermore, some young women and teenagers found themselves with IUDs normally intended for adult women who had already given birth. These devices, unsuited to their bodies, caused severe pain, which many of them still remember decades later.
The sterilization campaign began in the 1960s with the aim of reducing the birth rate in Greenland, mainly due to economic considerations. Limiting the number of births meant limiting the number of children in day-care centers, schools and health institutions, and therefore the corresponding cost. The discovery of this scandal sparked outrage both within Greenlandic society and on an international scale.
Mirjana Binggeli, PolarJournal
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