Last January, Greenland was much in the news thanks to comments from President-elect Donald Trump about U.S. action to acquire the vast and frigid land from the Kingdom of Denmark. Interest in that topic has faded a bit, if President Trump’s failure to mention Greenland during his United Nations visit this week is any indication, but another topic that garnered attention last winter is back in the headlines: Denmark has finally taken action to address the crimes of coerced contraception and abortion it inflicted upon Greenland’s Inuit population decades ago.

The basic history is straightforward. In the 1960s and ‘70s, Western governments, influenced by a band of cultural elites and alarmist authors, stoked fears of a “population bomb” that would destroy the global economy and destabilize nations. These alarms persuaded governments to unite around initiatives for top-down population control, with varying policies around the world, from enactment of generously funded birth control programs, to legalization of abortion, and — in several countries — to coercive measures against targeted groups that included forced contraception, abortion, and sterilization.

Millions of families were affected by these policies, and one result has been a crashing of birth rates that many countries — East and West, democratic and communist — are straining to reverse. Recognition of the role of this dark vision in creating population collapse has been minimal, and few participants have bothered to offer regrets or apologies for the drastic courses of action on which they embarked a half-century ago.

This makes recent developments in Greenland all the more singular. As detailed last January in The Washington Stand, political powers in Denmark feared rapid population growth in the vast territory of Greenland among its native Inuit population. They took action against Inuit girls at a very early age. One of them, Naja Lyberth, blew the lid off the scandal with a Facebook post in 2017 that detailed how a routine medical visit led to her being fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD) in 1976 when she was age 13. Facebook exploded with responses from other Inuit women who were treated the same way. Estimates are that the compulsory — and often hidden from the girls themselves — program was inflicted upon nearly half of the island’s 9,000 female population.

In September 2022, the national government in Copenhagen agreed to conduct a study of the origins of the program and to release it by May 2025. The furor was understandably overwhelming, and a drive began in Greenland for separation from Denmark and independence for a nation that had been under rule from Copenhagen for centuries. In the modern era, Greenland has moved toward greater self-rule, going from colonial status to being a province of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953 and achieving home rule in 1979. It retains strong ties to Denmark in the realms of foreign policy, defense, and finance, including receiving large sums to finance its national health care system. The population policy has only spurred the Greenlandic sentiment for more freedom from Denmark’s distant control, and the Trump administration’s pressure and saber-rattling have had a parallel effect of encouraging Greenland’s popular defiance and Denmark’s action to knit the two entities closer together.

On Wednesday of this week, a landmark was reached when Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen delivered an emotional apology to an audience of Inuit women in Greenland’s capital city Nuuk. “Today, there is only one real thing to say: Sorry,” Frederiksen said. “Sorry for the wrong that was done to you because you were Greenlanders. Sorry for what was taken from you, and for the pain it caused.” She went on: “Many of you have been fighting for years for justice and for us to listen, for us to take responsibility, and we’re doing that now: Denmark and Greenland together,” lamenting “a chapter in our shared history that should never have been written.”

If the language of the apology seems wan from a distance, the story of one victim, Katrine Petersen explains why. At age 13, she became pregnant. Danish doctors in the Greenlandic town of Maniitsoq aborted the pregnancy, then fitted her with an IUD without her consent. “Because of my age, I didn’t know what to do,” she told the Associated Press. “I kept it inside me and never talked about it.” This led to “anger, depression, and too much to drink[.]” She was unable to have children of her own. Petersen, now age 52, finally had the implanted IUD removed earlier this year.

The investigative report on the Danish policy, first promised for May, was finally released on September 9. It confirmed that the program of coercive population control had ensnared more than 4,000 women and girls who were implanted with IUDs or given contraceptive injections while the program was in place. The report included the specific experiences of 350 women who came forward to speak to the investigators. The women reported a range of emotional, psychological, and physical damage from the government’s actions. Lawsuits are still pending from nearly 150 Inuit women who are seeking an average of $44,000 in damages from the actions of the Danish health system. Clearly, something more than a simple “sorry” is appropriate.

It would be difficult to find a more blatant example of the absurd horror of government-led anti-population campaigns. When the Danish program began, the population of Greenland was 34,131 people. The population density was .099 people per square kilometer. The campaign ultimately reached and destroyed the fertility of half or more of the Inuit women in the landmass — 9,000 women as noted above. It’s impossible to believe that concerns about population growth were anything but pretextual. Any person interested in identifying a situation of maximum abuse of a colony need look no further than Denmark’s relationship with Greenland, whose people it treated like so many cattle.

The difficulties extend well beyond forced birth control. In addition to these medical crimes, Denmark has historically subjected Greenlandic women to a series of parenting tests that have resulted in the removal of children from their mothers on the basis of test results and not because of any abuse by the mother. These forced placements of babies in foster homes on the Danish mainland continue to the present day. In the most recent case, illustrating how the protests from Greenlanders are having additional effect, the Danish National Appeals Board on Friday reversed the decision to remove a day-old baby from its mother, Ivana Bronlund last August 11. Statistics reportedly show that Greenlandic women are five times more likely to have their children taken away than Danish mothers. Bronlund greeted the decision with a simple, “My heart is whole again.”

But other mothers have not been so blessed. What’s next for this story of profound human rights abuses? The forced birth control litigation continues. The need for apologies in other nations where coercion and sex selection have been practiced with a horrific toll — most notably the People’s Republic of China — is acute. Denmark’s example could be pressed upon these nations, whose governments still treat “state ownership” of the means of reproduction as a matter of course, though now they are more likely to do so in what advertises itself as pro-natalism.

Meanwhile, the United States, which has pursued on-and-off policies supporting global population control campaigns, could deal with Greenland and other persecuted nations with far more sensitivity. The Trump administration’s language and bearing toward Greenland speak not of its history, the value of its people, and the abuse they have suffered but of its potential financial and strategic military value to America. The tone has served merely to remind Greenlanders of how little regard they are held in by distant powers that value them on purely materialistic grounds. Our nation might instead join in efforts to remedy these past crimes by encouraging Western nations to adopt and enforce the standards embodied in the Reagan-era Mexico City Policy and other laws designed to check coercion of any kind.

If that course is taken, the events this week in Nuuk could prove to be a turning point of their own. Apologies by national leaders for past actions could expedite a new era of peace and mutual respect among peoples and nations, no matter their size or influence. The ball remains in Denmark’s court to provide lasting leadership in the form of compensation that recognizes, to the extent possible, the magnitude of the harm represented by lost children and vanished legacies. For the rest of the globe, reflection on the attitudes that led to such cruelty against fellow human beings is in order. These events, after all, are not ancient history but a present peril.

One last suggestion: over the decades, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to organizations and individuals that have championed human rights, as well as to those that have helped negotiate or secure peace between factions or nations. Naja Lyberth and the Inuit women who came forward in the face of decades of silence and indifference and told their story to the world surely qualify for such recognition.