‘Get on a plane’: Danish minister urged to meet Greenland coil scandal women

The Danish health minister should “get on a plane and visit” some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenland’s gender equality minister has said.

In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone.

The total number of those affected by the procedures, thought to have continued for decades, is understood to be far higher. Victims and their lawyers say generations of Inuit women were left traumatised and suffering reproductive complications, including infertility, as a result of the Danish state’s policy.

Earlier this month, a group of 143 women sued the Danish state over the alleged violations, but they have yet to receive a response from the government, despite the Danish prime minister visiting Greenland – now an autonomous territory of Denmark – soon after.

Now Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for housing, infrastructure, minerals, justice and gender equality, has urged the Danish minister for health, Sophie Løhde, to come and hear for herself the stories of affected women – something she said Løhde has yet to do, despite several invitations.

“She’s been invited several times and has not yet found time in her calendar to come. Really she should get on a plane and visit and talk to these women,” Nathanielsen told the Guardian, adding: “It gives you a different perspective.”

Denmark’s reaction to the scandal – it will not report on its investigation until May 2025 – had been “slow-coming”, she said, prompting Greenland to launch its own inquiry. The territory now controls its own legal system, police, home affairs and – crucially – natural resources, even if Copenhagen controls foreign affairs and defence.

“We decided as a collective, the [Greenlandic] health minister and me, that we needed an investigation into the violations of human rights. We couldn’t wait for the Danish political administration to get the realisation it was necessary. We need to move forward with it now, ourselves.”

Nathanielsen met rights groups this week and plans to put forward a plan to the Greenlandic cabinet in late April on how to press ahead with an investigation.

The Danish ministry of the interior and health declined to comment on the fact that Løhde has not visited Greenland and said it was not aware of a Greenlandic investigation into the coil allegations.

A spokesperson said: “The framework for the impartial investigation of the tragic matter referred to as the coil case has been agreed on and signed by the Greenlandic department of health and the ministry of the interior and health, and there has been full agreement on the commission between the Danish and Greenlandic government, Naalakkersuisut.

“The ministry has not received official information from the Greenlandic department of health that the government is starting its own investigation into the coil case.”

Nathanielsen said the coil scandal described by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples as a “particularly” egregious part of the colonial legacy – had an important broader historical context for Greenlanders.

“For us this story plays into the story about children being adopted without parental consent, about children being sent to Denmark, forgetting their language and their culture. It’s about stories of Danish men coming to Greenland and fathering children that they then did not assume responsibility for,” she added.

“It’s a part of this both colonial and postcolonial matter that is still very present in Greenland in our way of viewing our relationship with Denmark. And the sooner the Danes come to that realisation, the sooner we can put it past us.”

Nathanielsen said that as a woman in her late 40s she came across others affected by the coil scandal “all the time”.

“They’re just a generation older than me. So I know a lot of women that were affected, that did not have the opportunity to have children, who definitely feel their lives were very much affected by the Danish administration and their way of viewing both Greenlanders and our country’s ability to make decisions on our own,” she said.

She said writing off Denmark’s contraceptive practices on girls as young as 12 as the product of another time was “a very white way of thinking”, “because yes, that’s just easy to say when you’re not directly affected”. For those who know people who were “cut off from the possibility of becoming mothers”, it’s an entirely different perspective, she added.

Related: Greenlandic women plan to sue Danish state over historical contraceptive ‘violation’

Although the coil is now a safe and highly effective form of birth control, lawyers for the Greenlandic women say that for many the forcible fitting of unsophisticated devices that were often too big for the girls’ young bodies went on to cause a lifetime of medical difficulties.

Nathanielsen said: “I can be a bit frustrated and actually infuriated when I see a lack of sensitivity toward that part of the story and how it actually affected people’s lives, people who live today. It’s not just a matter of history, it’s current history as well because people are living now who are affected.”

It has taken decades for the scandal to become public knowledge in Denmark, with the Facebook testimony of one woman, Naja Lyberth, largely credited as having broken the silence in 2017. In 2022, a Danish podcast, Spiralkampagnen (meaning “coil campaign”), delved into the programme’s records, further raising awareness.

Nathanielsen said that while many organisations and politicians in Denmark were starting to “realise the magnitude” of what happened, others were still having problems accepting it. “It’s an injustice that was made and decisions that were made on behalf of other people that had real affects on their lives that were quite devastating,” she said.