1. Colonial Reproductive Coercion and Control in Kalaallit Nunaat: Racism in Denmark’s IUD Program.
- Author
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Dyrendom Graugaard, Naja, Pihl Sørensen, Victoria E., and Stage, Josefine Lee
- Subjects
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RACISM , *SCIENTIFIC racism , *FAMILY planning , *DANES , *INTRAUTERINE contraceptives - Abstract
In 1967, Denmark launched an intrauterine device (IUD) program in Kalaallit Nunaat targeting Kalaallit girls and women for reproductive control under the banner of “family planning”. Soon, thousands of Kalaallit women and girls had been subjected to IUD insertions, many of them without consent. In this article, we examine the colonial reproductive coercion and control of this IUD program. First, we situate this program in the centuries-long Danish racialization of Kalaallit through colonization and race science, in the history of the Danish welfare state, and in the Neo-Malthusian fear of “global overpopulation”. Then, we read along the Danish colonial archive’s grain and examine news media articles regarding family planning in the 1960s. Here, we demonstrate the discursive emergence of a reductive, racialized, and gendered figure ‘Grønlænderinden’ who ranks lower than the Danish woman in the racial hierarchy. Consequently, we argue that any analysis of the Danish family planning scheme and the IUD program must take the Danish colonial logic’s production of racialized gender into account. We conclude that the IUD program in Kalaallit Nunaat has led to “the loss of a generation of children” and that it should be examined under the auspices of genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2025
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