Exclusive: Territory’s government calls for visit to listen to those thought to be living with consequences of forced fitting of IUDs

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.

  • livus@kbin.social
    237·
    1 year ago

    Pretty ironic though. That comment was in the context of talking about how easy it is for people to dismiss the abuse these Indigenous women went through.

    Cue, an entire comment section that is mostly focussed on discussing whether white people feel attacked, than the decades of hell these women endured.

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
        54·
        1 year ago

        That’s one way to admit that some white people will put their delicate sensibilities over and above actual genocide.

      • livus@kbin.social
        55·
        1 year ago

        I think you’re right, but I think that undermining mostly happens because of skewed priorities.

        • PugJesus@kbin.social
          53·
          1 year ago

          I just want to know that I’m at least fucking safe in left-spaces. I expect right-wing spaces to denigrate me. They’re shitheads to begin with. But is it too much to ask that the issue of being part-white not lead into part of me being sneered at?

          It’s tiring, man. I just want it to end.

        • SpaceCowboyEnglish
          52·
          1 year ago

          All races are a social construct. But the fact that race is a social construct doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and attitudes towards race doesn’t affect people.

          I want to live in a world where no one sees race. But that’s not the world we live in. Pretending race doesn’t exist is just ignoring problems and allowing them to persist.

          Your attitude that white is not a race is the same attitude of those that want to pretend that “not seeing race” is an enlightened way of thinking when really they just want to ignore issues.