How did contemporary Danish medical guidelines describe appropriate use of IUDs in the 1960s and 1970s, and who approved deployments in Greenland?
Executive summary
Contemporary Danish medical practice and law in the 1960s–70s treated intrauterine devices (IUDs) primarily as contraceptives for women of child‑bearing age, and multiple sources say formal rules restricted giving contraception to minors without parental consent — a rule that changed around 1970 — while the placement of IUDs in very young or nulliparous girls was legally fraught [1] [2]. Deployments in Greenland were carried out by Danish doctors under the direction and oversight of Danish health authorities and the Ministry responsible for Greenlandic health at the time, a pattern established in archival records and journalistic investigations [2] [3] [4].
1. What the era’s practice and law said about who should get IUDs
Danish medical norms in the 1960s and 1970s framed IUDs as devices for preventing pregnancy in women, but not as routine contraceptives for pre‑menstrual or nulliparous girls; legal restrictions meant doctors could not provide contraception to underage girls without parental consent until a 1970 change and after 1970 there were prohibitions on placing IUDs in girls under 15 who had never been pregnant — a fact highlighted in summaries of the “spiral case” [1] [2]. Contemporary accounts and later reporting also note that the physical design of IUDs in the 1960s (larger, S‑shaped coils) made them more invasive and medically controversial compared with later devices, contributing to professional caution about use in adolescents [4]. Those legal and medical limits indicate that, in principle, Danish guidance did not endorse mass placement of coils in very young, nulliparous girls without consent [1] [2].
2. How policy diverged from practice in Greenland
Despite those official constraints, investigative journalism and government inquiries have documented widescale insertion campaigns in Greenland beginning in the mid‑1960s, with as many as 4,500 IUDs placed between 1966 and the mid‑1970s — a figure reported by Danish authorities and recounted across multiple outlets — many of which involved minors or were done without clear informed consent [4] [5] [2]. Archival material and the DR podcast that triggered the “spiral case” show that the practice in Greenland did not neatly follow the letter or spirit of mainland Danish guidance: devices were often fitted during routine health checks or school medical visits, sometimes after instruction from visiting doctors or local authorities [2] [4].
3. Who approved and organized the Greenland deployments
Records and reporting attribute the campaign’s origin and supervision to Danish health authorities and the Ministry responsible for Greenlandic administration at the time: the Ministry of Greenland operated under the Danish government and coordinated health modernization programs that included family‑planning activities, and journalists found documentary evidence that the IUD placements were a government‑approved strategy to curb population growth and welfare costs [3] [2]. Multiple outlets describe the placements as carried out “under the direction” of Danish government officials and by Danish doctors who visited Greenland, indicating institutional sign‑off rather than isolated rogue practice [2] [4].
4. Contested facts and the limits of the record
Reporting and official probes leave some questions unresolved: sources acknowledge uncertainty about how many insertions lacked consent, and investigations have found both non‑consensual operations and documented consents in different cases, with some alleged incidents occurring decades later and even after Greenlandic home‑rule changes [1]. The publicly available summaries and journalism establish systemic involvement by Danish health authorities but do not include verbatim copies of the contemporaneous Danish medical guidelines themselves, so precise wording of mid‑century clinical guidance on IUD indications cannot be quoted from these sources [2] [3].
5. Competing interpretations and political context
Interpretations split between characterizing the campaign as a government‑led population‑control policy rooted in colonial paternalism and viewing some actions as the product of medical modernization efforts under fiscal pressures; historians and Greenlandic leaders have framed the campaign as systemic discrimination and a “dark chapter,” while official Danish statements and later investigations acknowledge wrongdoing and institutional responsibility without necessarily equating all individual clinicians’ motives [2] [6] [4]. The sources collectively point to policy approval and operational oversight by Danish state actors even as legal technicalities about consent, age thresholds, and documented permission complicate a simple account [1] [5].