More than 350 women from Greenland have recounted nearly 500 cases in which Danish doctors forcibly prescribed them various forms of contraception—often without their consent or even their knowledge. These testimonies formed the basis of a major report released earlier this week.
The document, based on the testimonies and medical records of 354 women, captures only part of the consequences of a campaign that, according to the Danish government and Associated Press, affected nearly half of women of reproductive age in Greenland during that period. Most of the episodes date back to the 1960s and 1970s, although some cases continued in the following decades.
Among the victims were girls as young as 12 and younger. They were summoned to hospitals, where most were fitted with intrauterine devices to prevent pregnancy. Another 43 women reported being given injections of the drug Depo-Provera. Others recalled forced abortions, prescriptions of oral contraceptives, and sterilizations—35 cases in total.
The investigation unfolds against the backdrop of a reckoning with Greenland’s painful colonial past. In recent years, the issue has taken on renewed resonance: the Trump administration sought to push the island toward breaking ties with its former metropole and drawing closer to the United States, while Copenhagen, by contrast, tried to mend relations, including issuing apologies for the practice of coercive contraception.
The scale of what happened was first brought to light by journalists behind the Danish podcast "Spiralkampagnen" ("the spiral campaign"—a reference to intrauterine devices). According to the UN Regional Information Centre for Western Europe, between 1966 and 1980 some 4 500 IUDs were implanted in Greenland.
Denmark colonized Greenland in the 18th century and only officially ceased to regard it as a colony in 1953. Today it is a self-governing territory within the kingdom.
The history of forced contraception is only part of a broader program of social experiments through which Danish authorities sought to reshape life on the island. In 1951, 22 Inuit children were sent to Copenhagen to learn Danish. Only 16 returned, most of them deeply scarred by the experience, remembered as "the little Danes experiment." Later Denmark handed over lands used by Inuit hunters, the Inughuit, to the Americans for air bases, and in the 1970s relocated fishermen from coastal settlements into apartment blocks on the outskirts of Nuuk to "optimize" the fishing industry.
In 2022, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen apologized to the six surviving participants of the experiment. "What you had to endure was terrible; it was inhuman, unjust, and heartless," she said.
The authors of the new report—researchers from the University of Greenland and the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark—note that the official aim of the campaign was to curb population growth and reduce the number of single mothers by preventing pregnancies.
The average age of those fitted with intrauterine devices was 16.7, while those given contraceptive injections averaged 17.4. Most of the women who underwent these procedures were between 12 and 37 years old. Many recalled that they were never told what was being done to them, and neither they nor their parents gave consent.
Survivors spoke of severe pain during the interventions and of long, agonizing aftereffects that lasted for years. Some said they were left unable to have children at all.
An independent investigation into these cases began in 2022 at the initiative of the governments of Denmark and Greenland. In 2024, around 150 Inuit women filed a class-action lawsuit against the Danish state, seeking nearly 43 million Danish kroner ($6.24 million) in compensation, framing what had happened as a violation of their human rights, according to The Guardian.
In August, a month before the final report’s release, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen called the coercive medical practices "a dark chapter of our history" and stressed that Greenland, which gained control over its own healthcare system only in 1992, also acknowledges its share of responsibility. "We cannot change what happened. But we can take responsibility," Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in the same statement, adding: "Therefore I want to say on behalf of Denmark: we are sorry."
Similar practices have occurred elsewhere. India, Peru, the United States, and Canada have at different times carried out—and in some cases continue to carry out—programs of sterilizing women, most often by tying, blocking, or removing fallopian tubes, or by removing the uterus. UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, classifies forced sterilization as a form of coercive contraception.
Comparable campaigns took place in Indonesia and China. Under Suharto’s regime in Indonesia, doctors were accused of imposing contraceptive injections and applying other methods without women’s consent, according to a study of the state family planning program. In China, authorities were accused of forcibly fitting contraceptives and sterilizing Uyghur Muslim women to reduce the size of their community, as reported by the BBC in 2020. China has categorically denied these accusations.