Thursday, December 8, 2022

‘Doctors fitted a contraceptive coil without my consent’

Bebaine

Image caption,
Bebiane was struggling to fall pregnant before the coil was discovered inside her

Thousands of women in Greenland, including some as young as 12, had a contraceptive device implanted in their womb - often without consent - as part of a Danish campaign to control Greenland's growing Inuit population in the 60s and 70s.

The Danish government has announced an independent investigation into this so-called "Coil Campaign".

But the BBC has gathered accounts from women about recent involuntary contraception, amid growing calls for the investigation to go further.

Short presentational grey line

When Bebiane was 21 years old, she went to have a coil fitted - only to hear the shocking news that there was already one inside her.



Thousands of women in Greenland, including some as young as 12, had a contraceptive device implanted in their womb - often without consent - as part of a Danish campaign to control Greenland's growing Inuit population in the 60s and 70s.

The Danish government has announced an independent investigation into this so-called "Coil Campaign".

But the BBC has gathered accounts from women about recent involuntary contraception, amid growing calls for the investigation to go further.

Short presentational grey line

When Bebiane was 21 years old, she went to have a coil fitted - only to hear the shocking news that there was already one inside her.


"I remember the tears rolling down my cheeks, and I told them that I couldn't understand how I already had a coil in me… How could I not remember when I had it put in?"

Bebiane believes the only time the coil could have been inserted without her knowing was when she had an abortion at the age of 16, in the early 2000's.

For the next four years she suffered from crippling spells of abdominal pain so severe that they left her unable to climb stairs.

"I went to the hospital so many times and they didn't know what was wrong with me… [The pain] came when I had my period, but it also came when I didn't have my period."

She wanted to get pregnant, but had still not conceived after more than a year.

"Every time I would get my period… I would cry," Bebiane tells me.

She decided to take a break from trying for a few months, and to get a coil fitted, as friends had advised her - wrongly - that this would boost her fertility.

This was when she made the discovery that one had already been fitted.

She had it taken out, abandoned plans for a new one, and fell pregnant within months.

The experience of Mira [not her real name] is even more recent. In 2019, she discovered she had a coil inserted when a doctor found it during a medical examination.

"I was so shocked," she says.

The only time it could have been inserted without her knowledge, Mira thinks, would have been during minor uterine surgery she had in 2018.

She suffered intense pain for a year after the surgery. She says this was continuously dismissed by her doctor until a thorough check-up revealed the coil.

Mira, now 45, says the doctor told her the coil had pierced her uterus.

Exhausted by medical complications that she believes were caused by the coil, she opted to have her uterus removed entirely.

But she says the operation was not a success - she can no longer have sex because every time she does so it leads to more bleeding and excruciating pain.

Maniitsoq
Image caption,
The so-called "Coil Campaign" - intended to control Greenland's population - is being investigated

The coil isn't the only contraceptive device that appears to have been inserted in some of Greenland's female population without their knowledge.

Annita [not her real name] woke up from an abortion in 2011 with what she describes as a "limp feeling" in her arm, which she saw had been covered by a bandage. After asking the Danish doctor about it, he explained that it was a contraceptive implant - a small, flexible plastic rod that is placed under the skin of the upper arm.

Annita, now 31, says the doctor explained that the implant had been inserted because this was her fourth abortion.

"It was so horrible… he really crossed the line," she tells me. "I felt violated."

She demanded to have it removed, which she says he was reluctant to do. It was only when she began pulling off the bandage, threatening to take the implant out herself, that the doctor agreed to remove it.

Twenty-eight-year-old Saara, whose name we've also changed, says she, too, regained consciousness after an operation to make a shocking discovery.

It was 2014, and she had been put under general anaesthetic for a procedure following a miscarriage, but woke to a Danish nurse injecting her with the contraceptive Depo Provera.

"I didn't know what it was and she didn't ask me if I wanted it," she tells me, "just that I should come back to the hospital to get it every three months."

She says the nurse didn't even tell her the name of the drug. And once she did find it out, she had to look it up online to learn more.

Saara decided to continue using it for a few years, but she says that when she stopped taking the drug so she and her husband could have a baby, it took several years for her to fall pregnant.

She says she had not been told that Depo Provera could affect her menstrual cycle for up to 12 months after her last injection.

In September, Denmark and Greenland agreed to launch a two-year investigation. It aims to establish what happened until 1991, when Greenland took control of its health system from Denmark.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63863088

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