Photo on left:
KRT LIFESTYLE STORY SLUGGED: HEALTH-IUDS KRT PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DITTRICK MEDICAL HISTORY CENTER VIA PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ( November 4) Intrauterine devices (IUDs) of the world, collected over 40 years by pharmaceutical executive Percy Skuy, are on display in Cleveland. (1j) 2005
TNS
Photo on right:
A view of the Greenlandic capital Nuuk from the Myggedalen vantage point.
Steffen Trumpf/dpa/TNS
Photos edited with Canva by The Xavierite
When Greenland took control over its own healthcare from its sovereign state, Denmark, in 1992, Danish medical professionals no longer had much control over the healthcare of Greenlanders.
While many Greenlanders praise Denmark for providing them with universal healthcare, removing this control from Denmark has evidently become one of, if not the greatest saving force for the future of the Greenlandic people.
This is because it was later discovered that, between 1960 and 1991, at least 4,500 women of partial or full-Greenlandic Inuit origin were given intrauterine devices (IUDs) without prior knowledge or consent–estimated to be about half of the total 9,000 women on the island at the time.
This is a topic long kept under wraps, and I only discovered it shortly after embarking on an Internet deep-dive about Greenland as it pertained to Trump’s monstrous desire to take control over the nation and usurp its natural resources for profit.
After I read up on the current issue, I began to wander more into the history of Greenland, when I discovered this horrific, largely-forgotten piece of our world’s history.
The majority of these sterilizations occurred between 1966 and 1970. The first survivor to speak out about this large-scale medical malpractice, which later became known as the “spiral case” due to the specific type of IUD used in these trials, came out with her story in 2017.
Naja Lyberth was only 14 years old when she had an IUD placed inside of her by a Danish doctor in 1976. Lyberth told the United Nations that because she was raised to be an “‘obedient’ helpful girl” based on traditional Greenlandic Inuit norms, she felt intimidated by the mere thought of challenging what was happening to her.
“My entire upbringing in my culture made it almost impossible to fight against the doctor or flee from the doctor,” Lyberth said in the United Nations article.
“Back then, when a Danish person said something, their word was law, you had to listen to them,” said Hedvig Frederiksen to The Guardian, also only 14 when she, too, was sterilized by Danish doctors in 1974.
Frederiksen remembers herself and a group of girls around her age being summoned in her new school in Paamiut, Greenland to the local hospital–Frederiksen remembers seeing each girl come out of the doctor’s room, crying, horrified.
“I have been feeling very ashamed for many years and I am very shy. I couldn’t even speak about it,” Frederiksen later told The Guardian.
These atrocities were largely committed to decrease the overall birth rate in Greenland to, tragically, considerable success. The birth rate in Greenland began to plummet in 1965 and didn’t begin to turn upwards until ten years later—even still, it hasn’t come close to where it was before the sterilizations began.
The Danish Government believed the island was becoming too overpopulated, as new medicines and other technological advancements were rapidly allowing Greenlanders to live longer and produce more children.
Women who claim to have been sterilized against their will can now apply for 300,000 kroner (kroner is Danish currency–equivalent to about $46,000 USD).
This is a great start, but nothing could ever truly erase such cruelty, or the effect it had on the women involved, and the population of Greenland as a whole.
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