The prime minister of Denmark issued a long-awaited apology to Greenland on Wednesday after a scandal in which Danish doctors forced birth control devices on Greenlandic women and girls, some as young as 12.
The practice went on for decades and many patients were never told what had been placed inside them. Some learned only years later when they had health complications. Some women were left infertile for life.
It was widely known as the “Spiral Case,” after the shape of the intrauterine devices that were used, and it has remained a painful symbol of what Greenlanders consider generations of mistreatment by Danes.
Denmark colonized Greenland more than three centuries ago and the gigantic island, high up in the Arctic Ocean, remains an overseas territory of Denmark. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said: “We cannot change what has happened. But we can take responsibility. Therefore, on behalf of Denmark, I would like to say sorry.”
She said that an independent investigation into the matter that began in 2022 would be completed soon and that the government was aware of “other dark chapters that involve systematic discrimination against Greenlanders.”
“My apology on behalf of Denmark is also an apology for these other wrongs,” she said, without elaborating on what they were.
Greenland’s population is mostly Indigenous Inuit people and many have been pushing for years for such an apology. But on Wednesday, they didn’t seem satisfied.
“It is too late and not good enough,” said Jens Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister.
Other politicians in Greenland quickly shifted the conversation to reparations, saying now that Denmark had accepted responsibility, it must compensate the women who were affected.
“It is time for Denmark to pay,” said Mute B. Egede, Greenland’s former prime minister and a current member of Parliament.
The campaign started in the 1960s and affected thousands of Greenlandic women and girls but was brought to light only a few years ago. Danish doctors, who were running Greenland’s health care system at the time, inserted I.U.D.s in women and girls as young as 12 with the intent of preventing pregnancies and controlling Greenland’s birth rate.
By the 1990s, the campaign petered out. But some Greenlandic women have come forward and said that birth control devices were forced on them even after that.
Greenlandic officials offered their own apology on Wednesday, taking responsibility for incidents of forced contraception after 1991, when Greenland’s semiautonomous government took over the health care system.
“Sorry to those of you who have been subjected to — and have lived with the consequences of — procedures you did not ask for or have control over,” said a statement from Mr. Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister.
Uullat Bach, 63, a retired teacher living in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, is one of the victims in the case. She was around 13, she said, when she was subjected to an involuntary I.U.D. insertion. Soon after, she was hospitalized with severe pain, she said, and doctors then removed the infected device.
“That’s when I found out that they had put it in me,” she said.
Years later, when she tried to have children, she said that scarring from the device had left one ovary blocked and the other narrowed, making pregnancy impossible.
“I feel recognized, instead of them being silent and pretending nothing happened,” she said by telephone on Wednesday. “This is a big day for me.”
Jeffrey Gettleman is an international correspondent based in London covering global events. He has worked for The Times for more than 20 years.
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