Aggregated News
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has apologised for the first time for the forced contraception scandal in which thousands of Greenlandic girls and women were fitted with contraceptive coils without their permission or knowledge.
Describing it as “systemic discrimination” against women and girls by the Danish healthcare system, Frederiksen said that because they were Greenlandic they were subjected to “both physical and psychological harm”.
Some of the women were as young as 12 when they say they were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD) by Danish doctors in an attempt to reduce the population of Greenland, which until 1953 was a Danish colony and only gained control of its own healthcare system in 1992.
It is believed that 4,500 women and girls were affected between 1966 and 1970. Greenland’s former prime minister, Múte B Egede, has described the IUD scandal as a “genocide”.
Denmark’s apology for cases up to 1992 – made in a joint statement with the Greenland prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, who apologised for cases after that date – comes ahead of the publication of a long-awaited investigation...