Beginning in the late 1960s, Denmark placed IUDs on many Greenlandic women, often young teenagers, without their knowledge or consent. After remaining silent for a long time, the victims are now demanding reparations.
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“I was 13 or 14, I’m not sure anymore. It was during our annual medical exam at school. The pain was indescribable,” recalls Naja Lyberth. This 61-year-old psychologist is one of thousands of Greenlandic women who underwent the insertion of an IUD as a teenager, at the end of the 1960s.
Nearly 50 years later, this woman with curly graying hair and dark eyes remembers very clearly the day in 1976 when she and her school friends from Maniitsoq, a small island in western Greenland, were sent to ‘hospital. “We were used to having a medical examination every year to check our state of health. But this time, we were asked to go to the hospital,” she tells France 24. The rest is up to her in bits and pieces. “I remember a white coat, a nurse and gynecology equipment that seemed immense for my young girl’s body. Then the pain, as if thousands of knives were penetrating inside me.”
“This is the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life. This doctor raped me, stole my virginity and forced my body to endure an IUD that was way too big for my body at the time,” she denounces.
Break the silence
For several decades, Naja repressed this trauma. “I think I was so ashamed that I didn’t want to remember it and talk about it,” she says. But the consequences of the operation on his body appear and last. “I had intense period pain, with huge bleeding that forced me to stay at home,” she explains. It is only when she reaches menopause, around age 50, that the truth comes back to her. “My condition got worse, I started to have blood circulation problems, ovarian cysts. I was in so much pain that the doctors were considering removing my uterus. That’s when everything came back to me. “
We are then in 2017 and the psychologist, who practices in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, decides to reveal her story in a long text published on Facebook. With a message: “Have other women experienced the same thing?” “In total, more than 200 people from all over Greenland responded to me, saying they had suffered similar experiences. That’s when I understood that I was not alone and that I had to break the silence. “
For five years, Naja tried to spread her story but struggled to be heard in a country where violence against women is taboo. Until 2022, when two Danish journalists discovered her testimony in the local women’s magazine “Arnanut” and decided to investigate.
Birth control campaign
“They discovered that these operations were part of a vast campaign to control birth rates on the island, imposed by the Danish authorities in the 1960s and 1970s,” explains Naja Lyberth. In 1953, the archipelago went from colony status to that of a Danish province (it did not obtain autonomy until 1979), and has one of the highest birth rates in the world. And this increase in population has a cost for Denmark, committed to paying subsidies to Greenland indexed to demography.
The two journalists finally reveal the results of their investigations in a long podcast, “The IUD campaign”, on the website of the public audiovisual group DR. Based on government archives, they put forward a dizzying figure: 4,500 intrauterine devices were placed on women during this period. According to census figures, there were 9,000 of them of childbearing age.
The revelations cause a shock wave. “After this podcast, I received hundreds of testimonies from women, victims or not, who said they were shocked by the scale of the phenomenon,” says Naja Lyberth. “In Greenland, everyone knows women who have never been able to have children. At that moment, we understood why,” she summarizes. She finally had a son at age 35 after years of unsuccessful attempts.
Since then, many women have come out of silence. The therapist decided to create a support group on Facebook, where all victims can help each other and testify. Some recount the numerous complications due, according to them, to the insertion of the IUD, ranging from painful periods to infections to the need to have the uterus removed. Others tell how they discovered by chance that they had an IUD during a consultation with a gynecologist because they were unable to get pregnant.
An investigation opened in Denmark
Faced with this scandal, the local government of Nuuk has decided to offer psychological care to women who wish it. But eyes are now turning towards Copenhagen. The Danish government announced in May 2023 the opening of an investigation intended to shed light on the contraceptive methods used in Greenland since the 1960s. The commission responsible for the investigations should report its conclusions in 2025.
But the victims refuse to wait any longer. On Monday October 2, 67 women, including Naja Lyberth, sent a letter to the Danish government, demanding 300,000 crowns (around 40,000 euros) in compensation for each of them.
“We are getting older. The oldest among us were born in the 1940s and are approaching 80. We want to act now,” insists Naja Lyberth, who does not rule out also taking the case to court.
“This letter also has a cathartic side: we were able to make the young women that we were and who could not express themselves at the time speak. I am part of a generation of traumatized women and it is a way of to say that we are no longer silent and that we will no longer be silent.”
