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GREENLAND

Denmark sued by 143 Greenlandic women over forced contraception

More than 140 Greenlandic women sued the Danish state Monday for forcing them to have a coil, or intrauterine device (IUD), fitted in the 1960s and 1970s even though many were barely teens.

Published: 5 March 2024 12:22 CET
Denmark sued by 143 Greenlandic women over forced contraception
A file photo showing the remote Eastern Greenland village of Ittoqqortoormiit. Photo: Olivier MORIN / AFP

Denmark had carried out the campaign quietly, without the women’s consent or even knowledge in some cases, to limit the birth rate in the Arctic territory, which was no longer a colony at the time but still under Danish control.

“The lawsuit was filed this morning. My clients chose to do this because they received no reply to their request for compensation in October,” the lawyer for the plaintiffs, Mads Pramming, told AFP on Monday.

“Their human rights were violated, they are the living proof.”

A podcast series by Danish public broadcaster DR that aired in 2022 revealed the extent of the campaign — more than 4,500 women, based on data
from the national archives — and came as Denmark and Greenland, which became an autonomous territory in 2009, re-examine their past relationship.

In October, 67 women demanded the state pay them financial compensation of 300,000 kroner each.

“Since then, more women have joined us. The oldest one is 85 years old,” Pramming said.

A total of 143 women are suing the Danish state.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, some 4,500 young Inuits were forced to undergo the procedure without their consent or that of their family.

Many of the women were not aware they had been fitted with an IUD and Greenlandic gynaecologists until recently continued to find IUDs in women who had no idea they were there.

An inquiry launched last year into Denmark’s entire Greenland policy is due to be published in 2025.

“When it comes to (the women’s) case, the inquiry and its conclusions won’t be significant. It will not decide whether their rights were violated but the courts can make such a decision,” Pramming said.

In 2022, the Danish state apologised and paid compensation to six Inuits more than 70 years after they were separated from their families to take part in an experiment aimed at creating a Danish-speaking elite on the vast Arctic island.

Member comments

  1. A shameful and horrific legacy. Sadly, it reads all too familiar to my Canadian eyes. Part of the process of decolonization is recognizing the right of a people to self-identity. To that end, please note that your use of the term “Inuits” is incorrect. The word “Inuit” is the plural form, meaning the people. In the singular form it is an Inuk.

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HEALTH

‘Some towns had zero births’: Greenlanders sue Denmark over forced contraception

Henriette Berthelsen was separated from her family at 11 and forced to wear a contraceptive coil, a trauma she buried until she and 142 other Greenlandic women sued the Danish state.

Published: 3 May 2024 11:07 CEST
'Some towns had zero births': Greenlanders sue Denmark over forced contraception

Henriette Berthelsen was separated from her family at 11 and forced to wear a contraceptive coil, a trauma she buried until she and 142 other Greenlandic women sued the Danish state.

“I’ve suppressed so much,” Berthelsen said. “I had an IUD (intrauterine device) fitted nine times since the age of 13, according to my medical records,” the psychologist and activist explained with poise and dignity.

“Luckily — if one can say luckily — they fell out,” she said, her voice cracking, at her home in a Copenhagen suburb. “I remember being in so much pain.” 

Now 66, Berthelsen is one of the 143 Greenland Inuits who have sued the Danish state for violating their rights during its forced contraception campaign from the 1960s to 1980.

Some 4,500 fertile women were forced to undergo the procedure, often without their or their family’s consent.

Denmark carried out the campaign to limit the birth rate in the Arctic territory, which had not been its colony since 1953 but was still under its control.

Berthelsen’s parents never consented to her coils.

At the recommendation of the state, she was sent to Denmark for a year as a young girl to learn Danish and then to a Danish boarding school in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, far from her hometown of Qeqertarsuatsiaat in southwestern Greenland.

One day, “there was a sign that said that all the girls from the boarding school had to go to the infirmary”, she said.

The IUDs kept falling out, she recalled, holding a photograph of herself from the time — a young girl with long dark plaits.

‘Never contradict a Dane’

For a long time she didn’t tell anyone about her ordeal, remembering what her mother had taught her: ‘Never contradict a Dane’.

For many of her classmates, the experience had a devastating impact.

“In my class there were several girls who were never able to have children,” she said.

Berthelsen herself went on to have two kids.

She is now campaigning to get the Danish state to pay for therapy for the victims living in Denmark.

Greenland already pays such benefits to those living in the territory.

Ebbe Volquardsen, a lecturer at the University of Nuuk, said the women were seeking justice now because the time was ripe.

“It simply takes time for marginalised groups, including Greenlanders within the Danish realm, to develop an awareness of systemic inequality and the ability to articulate it as a problem,” she explained.

One of the victims spoke out in the media several years ago about the trauma she experienced.

A podcast series by Danish public broadcaster DR in 2022 then revealed the extent of the campaign.

“It’s important that the Danish state takes responsibility,” said Berthelsen.

“Some things happened as a result of colonialism” — like “deciding, instead of the people (concerned), whether they are too many or too few, committing a genocide, committing violence and offences against young girls”, she fumed.

Historian Soren Rud told AFP: “In the context of the 2020s, the authoritarian elements of the campaign stood out as a shocking example of how the colonial and post-colonial situation affected the interaction between Greenlanders and Danes.”

‘Big success’

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Mads Pramming, said one of the documents presented as evidence in the case is a copy of a 1971 review by a doctor extolling the “success” of the policy.

“There were 9,000 fertile women and, in just four years, they inserted an IUD in half of them. So 4,500. And the population dived enormously,” he said.

“Some towns had zero births during that period. After four years they concluded (it was a) big success.”

The large majority of the plaintiffs — the oldest of whom is now 82 — were left with lasting scars.

“Of the 143, about 50 of them had their uterus removed and were not able to have kids, and all of them suffered” physically and mentally, he said.

“Their own testimony is going to be the hardest evidence in the case.”

A fire destroyed many of the women’s medical files but that’s unlikely to change much.

“I don’t think the doctor would put in the medical file that he inserted this IUD in a 12-year-old girl with her crying and being held by two other adults,” Pramming said.

In October 2023, 67 of the plaintiffs filed claims for compensation from the Danish state of 300,000 kroner ($42,000) each.

“All of the requests for compensation will be evaluated by (us),” the health ministry told AFP in an email.

The case comes as Denmark and Greenland are re-examining their past relationship in a historic parliamentary committee.

In addition, researchers have opened a probe specifically into the forced contraception campaign.

Its conclusions are due in mid-2025.

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