During a medical examination at school, Naja Lyberth was implanted with a contraceptive coil without the doctors explaining to her what they were doing and without her family’s consent. The year is 1976 in Greenland and Lyberth was a 13-year-old girl. Like her, thousands of other Inuit girls – we’re talking at least 4,500 – were subjected to the same procedure between the 1960s and 1970s. Now 67 of these women are demanding compensation from the Danish government in the amount of 300,000 crowns, or around 42,000 euros each. The violent protocol was part of a Copenhagen plan to control births among the indigenous population and cut welfare payments. It was called the “Danish Coil Campaign” and in just a few years it halved the birth rate on the world’s largest island, the first Danish colony, now part of the Kingdom of Denmark
This story began circulating six years ago when Lyberth, a psychologist and activist, publicly denounced what had happened to her and her classmates, but it reached the press in 2022 after the publication of the “Spiral Campaigns” podcast, published by the public broadcaster Danish television was produced. which translates to “the spiral campaign”. The government of Copenhagen and the Naalakkersuisut, i.e. that of Greenland, have set up an independent commission of inquiry and are expected to publish the conclusions in spring 2025. The 67 women who reported do not want to wait another two years: “We don’t want to.” “I have to wait for the results of the investigation,” commented Lyberth. “We are getting older. The oldest of us who received contraception in the 1960s were born in the 1940s and are approaching 80. We want to act now.”
While Lyberth suffered no physical consequences from having the IUD implanted without consent, many other women were less fortunate than her: in some cases, the devices were too large for the girls’ bodies and caused serious health problems and infertility. In other cases, they had to live with acute pain and internal bleeding, and some had to undergo hysterectomies.