Stealing Wombs: Population Control And Forced Sterilisations In Greenland and Beyond

By Jean-Philippe Stone
August 20, 2022 - OWP (The Organization for World Peace)

“In May, journalists Celine Klint and Anne Pilegaard Petersen revealed in a podcast that Danish medical authorities had placed contraceptive intrauterine devices (IUDs) in the uteri of 4,500 Greenlandic women and girls, often without their informed consent, in order to stop pregnancies and curb population growth in the sixties and seventies.”

“In the United States, Jane Lawrence estimates that between 1970 and 1976, 25-50% of Native American women were sterilised, often without their knowledge. Many doctors at the Indian Health Service (IHS) strongly felt that poor “welfare scroungers”, especially among Native American, African American, and Puerto Rican minorities, did not possess the responsible behaviour or intellectual acumen required to use safer forms of birth control.”

“However, nations in the Western Hemisphere are not alone in using forced or coerced sterilisations to quietly end the reproduction of persons deemed economically burdensome, medically “defective”, or politically troublesome. Various regimes in Africa and Asia have a long and ignoble history in this regard as well.”

“The IUD scandal proves beyond doubt that Danish imperialism was never a benign, enlightened, or insignificant project. It was a brutal endeavour that decimated countless lives in Ghana’s slave routes, plantations in the Virgin Islands, and Greenland’s icy harbours. Acknowledging this simple truth will go a long way towards repairing relations with the Inuit and might even set a precedent for other nations to follow.”

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