this episode originally held on Friday, April 19, 2024
Bulla Larsen was 14 when one day she and her friends were told to go to the hospital. Bula lived in Greenland and was Inuit like most of the population of the island, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark. At the hospital, she and her friends lined up and were told to enter the room one by one. Bula recalls being asked to sit on a bed with “cold metal stirrups” where, to her shock, she was fitted with an IUD, a contraceptive IUD she never asked for or agreed to have.
Today, more than 100 women are suing the Danish government over its forced contraception policy. Helen Pead hears how thousands of Inuit women and girls – some as young as 13 – have been fitted with IUDs. Many say it was done without their consent or their parents’ consent and caused permanent damage.
Celine Clint is a Danish journalist whose work on the coil scandal, along with her colleague Ann Pillegaard Petersen, revealed that there was a Danish policy to reduce the birth rate in Greenland in order to reduce the amount of money that had to be spent on the region.
The women are now suing the government and an investigation is underway. Will they get justice?
