‘I was only a child’: Greenlandic women tell of trauma of forced contraception

Women say being fitted with IUDs without their consent left them with pain, shame and lasting reproductive difficulties

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Hedvig Frederiksen had been at her new school in Paamiut, Greenland, for only a couple of days when she was summoned from her dorm to the local hospital by a Danish caretaker.

She was 14 and had no idea what was going on. But back then [1974], when a Danish person said something, their word was law, you had to listen to them," said Frederiksen, speaking from her home in Nuuk, Greenland's capital.