- Adrian Murray
- BBC News
The Linga Libreath IUD was installed as part of a birth control strategy in Greenland in the 1970s
Denmark and Greenland have formally agreed to launch a two-year investigation into the historical practices of birth control that Danish doctors have implemented for many years on Greenlandic Inuit.
Thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD), known as an IUD, during the 1960s and 1970s.
It is a contraceptive that is placed inside the vagina or uterus. Naga Libreth was among the women and girls who had an IUD fitted.
In the 1970s, a doctor told Nga, who believed she was 13 at the time, to go to the local hospital for an IUD implant after a routine medical exam at school.
“I didn’t really know what an IUD was because the doctor didn’t explain it to me or get my permission,” says Naga, who was living at the time in Manitowoc, a small town on the west coast of Greenland.
“I was scared and couldn’t tell my dad, I was a virgin and I didn’t even kiss a boy,” she says.
Naga, 60, is one of the first to talk about what happened.
“I can remember the doctors in white aprons, maybe there was a nurse there, and I saw the stirrups you put your legs on, it was very scary, the equipment the doctors used was too big for my little body, it was like sticking knives inside me,” she says.
photo released, Come on Lyberth
A teen escaped in her home in the small town of Manitsuke
Naga says her parents’ permission was not obtained, and that her classmates were also taken to hospital but did not talk about it “because it was very traumatic”.
Naja has created a Facebook group to allow women to share their common experiences and help each other deal with trauma, and more than 70 women have joined the group.
A recent podcast SpiralCampen (Danish for the IUD) found records indicating that up to 4,500 women and girls, nearly half of all females at that time fertile in Greenland, had an IUD implanted between 1966 and 1970, but The procedures continued until the mid-seventies of the last century.
Among those cases, it is unclear how many lacked consent or adequate explanation.
Among those affected were girls as young as 12, many of whom have stated publicly that they were not properly informed, and some infertile women suspect that the IUD is to blame.
“A lot of women call me and it seems that the younger the girls, the more repercussions they have from that IUD,” says Naga. “It’s very sad.”
Arnanguak Poulsen was fitted with an IUD when she was 16, but not in Greenland but on Danish soil where she was studying at a boarding school for Greenland children on Bornholm Island in 1974.
Arnanguak Poulsen says she experienced pain as a result of having an IUD fitted as a teenager
“They didn’t ask me before the procedure, and I had no idea what it was all about, or what an IUD was,” she says.
She was able to travel to Greenland only once a year, and is sure not to consult her parents. Arnanguak, who is now 64, describes the pain and suffering she experienced, and says she had the IUD removed when she returned to Greenland a year later at the age of 17 .
“I feel like I didn’t get a choice at the time, and I can’t accept it,” she says, crying, “How would people react if this had happened to a Danish woman?”
There was little knowledge of the birth control program in Greenland and Denmark, and those reports caused shock and resentment.
A panel will now examine contraceptive practices implemented by Danish health authorities between 1960 and 1991 in both Greenland and schools in Denmark that had female Greenland students.
It was not until 1992 that the Greenland government exercised control over health policy, when this file was transferred to it from Copenhagen.
In a statement issued on Friday, Danish Health Minister Magnus Honeck said the investigation will shed light on the decisions that led to the practice and how it was implemented.
He said he had met many of the affected women, adding: “The physical and emotional pain they experienced continues to this day.”
Greenland was transformed from a colony into a province of Denmark in 1953.
Comprehensive modernization plans have improved health care and living conditions, improved life expectancy and neonatal survival rates.
But these successes brought other challenges, says Soren Rudd, a historian at the University of Copenhagen.
Greenland’s very small population rose, and by 1970 the number had nearly doubled.
photo released, Getty Images
The modern coil is inserted into the uterus to prevent pregnancy
Rudd believes that the rationale for the introduction of the coil was in part financial, but also the result of colonial attitudes.
“There has been a clear interest in trying to limit population growth as this will reduce the challenges of providing housing and care services,” he says.
A high percentage of young single mothers was another concern that prompted family planning initiatives to take action.
Rudd added that doctors wrote about the IUD initiative in the newspapers, considering it a success, and records show that the birth rate halved in just a few years.
Katrin Jacobsen, of Knock, says she was only 12 years old when she was fitted with an IUD, and remembers a relative’s friend took her to the doctor in 1974.
The coil had been in her body for nearly two decades, and she experienced pain and a series of complications, and in her late thirties had her uterus removed.
Catherine Jacobsen, from Knock, says she was only 12 years old when she was fitted with an IUD
“It has had a huge impact on my life as I have never had children, never told anyone, and always thought I was alone in this,” she says.
Today’s IUD is a small T-shaped device, but earlier models in the 1960s were S-shaped and much larger.
In a womb that has never been pregnant this can lead to more bleeding, more pain and a higher risk of infection,” says Dr. Aviaja Sigstad, a gynecologist at Queen Ingrid Hospital in Nuuk.
In the 1990s and 2000s, she and her colleagues encountered patients struggling to conceive, unaware they had IUDs. She says the number was not large, but it was not strange either.
“In two cases, we were able to date the IUD to women who had miscarried and it was likely that it had been placed after the miscarriage without telling them.”
According to the Greenland Human Rights Council, conventions on family life and privacy have been violated.
“We need to investigate to see if what happened in fact was genocide or not,” said Keviuk Lofstrom, head of the council. “We don’t want a discharge report.”
Mimi Carlsen, Greenland’s health minister, said Greenland’s involvement in the investigation was “necessary to find out the truth” about what happened.
It comes on the heels of other controversies that have drawn increasing scrutiny over Denmark’s former relationship with Greenland.
Denmark apologized in March and paid compensation to six Inuit who were separated from their families and sent to Denmark as part of a failed social experiment in the 1950s.
Over the summer, Greenland’s parliament voted to set up a separate commission to examine the relationship with Denmark after decolonization in 1953.
Women affected by birth control practices have been counseled, but Arnangjuk Poulsen is hoping for compensation.
“I know there are a lot of women who haven’t been able to get pregnant,” she says.