The last Greenland minister: We wouldn't have spoken openly about the spiral if we had a guilty conscience

[Saithan]

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Denmark's last and only living Greenland Minister, Tom Høyem, now enters the debate about the spiral campaign, which he still sees as an important and successful project.

It was "absolutely wrong and a crime if young girls in particular were given an IUD against their will, and it should be investigated thoroughly," says former Greenland Minister Tom Høyem. At the same time, he believes that the IUD campaign was a good idea. The picture shows the type of IUD that was used back in the 1960s and 70s. Photo © : DR

Written by Signe Haahr Pedersen

June 12, 2022 11:03 AM


One late summer day in 1985, Tom Høyem spoke at a large health conference in Nuuk.

As Denmark's Minister for Greenland, he was at that time the person most responsible for the Greenlandic healthcare system.

Therefore, he gave the opening speech, and among the points was the so-called spiral campaign.

- In the latter half of the 1960s, the health service increased its efforts to provide information about contraceptives, and the results were so startling that they must be of international interest, said Høyem and continued:

- They show how quickly fertility can be reduced if you have an effective health system and a population motivated to avoid pregnancies. Within 3-4 years, fertility was halved—especially due to the use of the IUD, and in the following 15 years, fertility was almost halved again.

The Spiral Campaign



In DR's podcast "The Spiral Campaign" , documents are unearthed that show that the spirals were part of the Danish authorities' strategy to reduce population growth in Greenland.



- Thousands of girls and women had IUDs inserted from 1966 to 1975.



- From 1966 to 1970, 4,500 spirals were installed.



- At that time, there were 9,000 fertile women in Greenland.



- Several of the girls experienced the IUD insertion as an assault, and that it was forced. It had major consequences for the girls, both psychologically and physically. Several talk about pain and traumatizing insertions.



- There was no legal basis for fitting IUDs on underage girls without parental consent when the strategy started.



- Therefore, the legislation was changed to allow doctors to advise girls under 18 on contraception without parental consent. This was interpreted by several doctors as meaning that the girls could have an IUD inserted without parental consent.


Source: DR podcast "Spiral Campaign"

Today Tom Høyem is 80 years old. The Ministry of Greenland no longer exists. He was the last in the post - and the nine who sat there before him are no more.

But his speech from 1985 is quite relevant. Recently, the spiral campaign has sparked a lot of debate in this country.

A debate that was launched in the wake of a podcast series from Danmarks Radio.

The series reveals that thousands of Greenlandic girls and women were given IUDs in the 1960s and 70s as part of the Danish authorities' strategy to reduce population growth in Greenland.

Several women tell DR and KNR that it happened without consent, and some only found out that they had an IUD in their uterus many years later.

Absolutely wrong and a crime​

However, the media coverage is irritating Tom Høyem, and that is why he is now joining the debate.

He says he has never heard of IUDs being systematically inserted without consent.

And according to him, the spiral campaign was not done in secret, but was open and known far and wide.

He believes that his speech from 1985 is an example of this.

- We, as a ministry, would not have talked about the IUD if we had a guilty conscience or thought it was something we should whisper about or didn't dare say out loud, says Tom Høyem to KNR.

READ ALSO Múte B. Egede on historical investigation: The things that have happened should not be swept under the carpet

He emphasizes that he considers it "absolutely wrong and a crime if young girls, in particular, have been given an IUD against their will," and that it should be investigated thoroughly.

- It must be investigated in particular because the two ministers who were responsible, Mikael Gam and Carl P. Jensen, should not suddenly be exposed to suspicion when what happened was a positive, open, active campaign for development in Greenland, he says.

Tom Høyem is convinced that if back in the '60s and '70s a decision was made to put IUDs on young girls and women without obtaining consent, the matter would have been around the Greenland Minister's table.

- The minister personally must have been involved if they deliberately wanted to break all the rules and prevent in a way that did not follow the rules for the information campaign they had launched, he says.

Could the girls say no?​

Part of the discussion about the IUD campaign focuses on the role of doctors.

Whether the girls and women were sufficiently informed before the intervention, and whether the unequal power relationship made it impossible for them to say no.

Tom Høyem says:

- I hope, and I am sure, that they have had a sense of responsibility towards the role they had. But the fact that in the 1960s people had a different attitude towards authorities than we have today is not surprising. When I travelled to Greenland at the time. I was in Greenland 46 times. The role of minister itself was also different. Belief in authority changes.

There was also the factor that the doctors were primarily Danes. There was also a power relationship there.

- Yes, that's right. At that time, there were almost no trained Greenlandic doctors. But you shouldn't forget the strong personalities who were in Greenland at that time. Do you think Moses Olsen or Jonathan Motzfeldt or Lars-Emil Johansen or Thue Christiansen would fall on their tails in front of Danish authorities? I can guarantee you that they didn't.

Who is Tom Høyem?



Tom Høyem was the tenth and last Minister for Greenland in Denmark.



He held the post from 1982 to 1987, when the ministry was closed down.



At that time he was part of the Centre Democrats party.



He subsequently served as principal of the European Schools in Oxford, Munich and Karlsruhe.



And since 2004 he has been active in local politics for the FDP party in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he lives.

Photo © : Private photo



Private photo: Tom Høyem

No, but they weren't 13-14 year old girls either.

- You're right. That's a real point. 13-14-year-old girls and their parents at that time - also perhaps because of language and education - have had a great deal, perhaps too much, of trust in authority figures.

Couldn't that whole aspect have played a role in relation to spirals?

- So, if you mean that more IUDs have been inserted than should have been, I doubt it. That there may have been 13-14-year-old girls whose parents have told them to go down and get an IUD, and that they have not protested to a Danish-speaking authority, which is the doctor, I completely understand.

A crucial campaign​

Tom Høyem makes it clear that he has heard DR's podcast series several times and has therefore listened to the women's testimonies.

However, they do not shake his belief that the campaign itself did more good than harm.

- I think it's so sad when the media forgets how significant this campaign was, how important it was. They pin it on sad, traumatic individual cases and forget the historical social development. That's why I'm getting involved in the debate, and also because I'm an old man, so it might not be long before I'm gone too, and then there won't be any more Greenland Ministers.

READ ALSO Gynecologist still finds old IUDs in women who got them during the IUD campaign

You believe that the benefits of the IUD campaign outweigh the abuse that some women have experienced?

- The possible abuses. The suspected abuses that need to be investigated. Yes, yes, yes. The development that the spiral has had for modern Greenland cannot be overestimated. It has had a completely, completely central role for the Greenland that you live in today.

Why don't you believe the women who have said they were abused?

- I'm not saying I don't believe it. No, no. I'm not trying in any way to discredit the women who have had a perhaps traumatic life because of it. But I'm trying to say that four, five, six, seven women - for all of them individually it's terrible. But we're talking about 4,500 cases. Try taking another health area, no matter which one, and look at 4,500 people. Then there have probably been some mistakes along the way, and those mistakes can only be said to be terrible, but you also have to try to keep the proportions.

The birth control pill generation forgets history​

Over the past month, the personal stories of women who were part of the campaign and its scope have sparked strong reactions.

The Greenland Council for Human Rights and experts from the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Danish Institute for Human Rights are talking about possible violations of human rights.

And a unanimous Inatsisartut has asked the Danish government for an impartial investigation of the Danish health authorities' contraception practices in Greenland in the years from around the mid-1960s to the end of 1991, when the health area was taken back home.

READ ALSO Psychologist about the IUD scandal: Women are experiencing trauma again

Tom Høyem thinks it is good that an investigation is being launched. At the same time, he maintains his position that the spiral campaign as a whole was good and important.

Today's "birth control pill generation," as he calls it, forgets the historical perspective, he believes.

- Greenlandic and Danish politicians were faced with a catastrophe in the 1960s. A development in Greenland that you, sitting in Nuuk now, cannot understand what it was like back then. People were dying of tuberculosis. There were an incredible number of abortions and stillborn children. A population growth that was completely irresponsible, he says and continues:

- I think it's absolutely fine that they campaigned so openly and loudly for the IUD. If it has been misused, I can of course in no way be responsible for that.

Den sidste Grønlandsminister: Vi ville ikke have talt åbent om spiralen, hvis vi havde dårlig samvittighed

Danmarks sidste og eneste nulevende Grønlandsminister, Tom Høyem, går nu ind i debatten om spiralkampagnen, som han stadig ser som et vigtigt og vellykket projekt.

knr-gl.translate.goog

 

[Saithan]

I found a thesis, but it's in danish, however the abstract is not.


Abstract
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Greenland experienced a rapid population growth. By request of the
Danish state, with the aim of reducing the birth rate, “The IUD campaign” was launched in
Greenland. The IUD-case has conveniently been ”forgotten” until it was publicly uncovered,
first in 2019 in a newspaper article, and then through a podcast in 2022 with the title
”Spiralkampagnen” (”The IUD campaign”). The podcast focuses on the use of imposed IUDs
on Greenlandic women and girls.

The main purpose of this thesis is therefore, to analyze the impact and significance of
the publication of the podcast ”Spiralkampagnen” towards the women concerned and to
determine whether the IUD-case constitutes a colonialist trait. I have chosen to analyze the
significance of the publication by conducting qualitative interviews with some of the women
concerned, and with scholars regarding the IUD-case. To analyze and determine if IUD-case
constitutes a colonial trait, the thesis’ theoretical framework is rooted in prominent theories of
colonialism and postcolonialism.

https://da.uni.gl/media/p5thpdzd/aviaq-speciale-den-koloniserede-kvindekrop.pdf

Page 9 (autotranslated)
it still happened that girls under the age of 15 who were not sexually active, and therefore had neither given birth nor aborted, had IUDs inserted (ibid.).
The word “guidance” is used consistently. Which raises the question of whether this
should be understood as providing information about contraception, or whether this also authorized the dispensing of
preparations and physical interventions such as the insertion of IUDs. Therefore, the journalists contacted an
expert in Greenlandic legal culture, Hanne Petersen, to discuss what meaning
“guidance” should be given at that time and in that context. The expert believed that
the legislation of the time in many ways reflected the view of the indigenous peoples of the time.
Legislation and practice were often not adapted to the indigenous peoples, but were instead an expression
of how the colonial power wanted to organize society according to its best convictions. The expert
Hanne, believed that the time during the IUD campaign was still characterized by colonial
patterns of action and paternalistic thinking, which is why the understanding and management of the word
"guidance" must also be considered in light of this (Klint and Petersen 2022 [Petersen, Hanne]).
The IUD did not only have consequences for individual girls and women, but also for the whole of
Greenland. In the period in question, there was a significantly decreasing national birth rate
(Greenland statistics: Births in Greenland 1945-2022, page 7) as a result of the IUD installation.
This is said by Peter Bjerregaard, professor of public health in Greenland, who participates in the first
episodes of the podcast (Klint and Petersen 2022 [Bjerregaard]). Bjerregaard says that the IUD
hides a much larger history. In connection with research, Bjerregaard had come across
remarkable figures that had been collected by doctors in Greenland in the 1960s-70s.
The figures in the 1960s showed that the birth rate among women in Greenland was very high, whereas in the
early 1970s it had fallen by half (ibid. [Bjerregaard]). This is not
surprising, since the journalists behind the podcast found that half of the women of childbearing age in Greenland had been given an IUD. That is 4,500 women out of 9,000 women and girls under 18 (Klint and Petersen 2022).

IMO it seems like a state has taken upon themselves to experiment on the Inuit, and kept the population very low, considering how few they were it seems like a hidden agenda, and they've done all they could to grey it out, so the truth won't be known other than the public part.