Denmark to compensate Greenlandic women over forced contraception

Around 4,500 may qualify for a payout for being subjected to involuntary birth control from the 1960s to as late as the 1990s Denmark will pay around $47,000 to each Greenlandic woman who can attest to having been implanted with a contraceptive device without consent while Copenhagen controlled the island’s healthcare system. Around 4,500 women may qualify under the scheme.The Danish parliament approved the payout of 300,000 kroner by a large majority on Thursday, with the compensation to be made tax-free regardless of the contraceptive method used or the number of incidents. To receive the money, the claimant should make a sworn statement and provide enough detail to make the incident plausible under the scheme. Providing medical records is not required because many of the alleged incidents occurred decades ago and the relevant documentation may no longer exist. The payouts address the so-called “spiral scandal,” named after the Danish word for an IUD. An independent Danish-Greenlandic inquiry found that at least 4,070 women and girls – some only aged 12 – had been fitted with IUDs between 1966 and 1970, close to half of Greenland’s women of reproductive age. To some extent, the p...