Compulsory sterilisation in Sweden
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Compulsory sterilisation in Sweden were sterilisations which were carried out in Sweden, without a valid consent of the subject, during the years 1906–2013 on eugenic, medical and social grounds. Between 1972 and 2013, sterilisation was also a condition for gender reassignment surgery.


Legal grounds

In 1922 the State Institute of Racial Biology was founded in
Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...
. In the 1930s, a law was passed that allowed mass sterilisation. The stated rationale behind the legislation was to prevent sterilisation from becoming a contraceptive method in the hands of the individual. Another law, passed in 1941, was more far reaching and stated three broad grounds on which sterilisation could be carried out: * Medical, if a pregnancy could pose a risk to life or good health of a woman with chronic illness or permanently weakened constitution. * Eugenic, which allowed sterilising people considered insane or with severe illness or with a physical disability, so that these traits are not passed on the offspring. * Social, which allowed sterilising people deemed unsuitable to foster a child due to
mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...
, being feebleminded or having an antisocial lifestyle. The law did not foresee any age of consent limit. However, it was never legal to physically restrain a person.


Statistics

The number of eugenic sterilisations peaked in the 1940s; from 1946, the number of sterilisations under the 1941 legal provisions gradually decreased. In 1997, on behalf of the Swedish government, the ethnologists Mikael Eivergård and Lars-Eric Jönsson made an attempt at estimating what percentage of sterilisations were coerced. They found that a quarter of the applications were made under circumstances similar to coercion such as a condition for release from an institution and that another 9 percent were signed under pressure. In half of the cases they found no sign of coercion or pressure, but signs of the applicants' own initiative. Tydén uses these percentages to make an estimate of the number of operations under coercion. He found that 15,000 were made as a condition for release and that another 5500 to 6000 were made under other kinds of pressure, whereas 30,000 were voluntary and on the applicants' own initiative. According to a 2000 government report, 21,000 people were estimated to have been forcibly sterilised, 6,000 were coerced into a "voluntary" sterilisation while the nature of a further 4,000 cases could not be determined. From the 2000s, the Swedish state paid out damages to victims who filed for compensation.


Sterilisation during sex change

Until 2013, sterilisation was mandatory before sex change. This last mandatory sterilisation has been criticised by several political parties in Sweden and since 2011 the
Parliament of Sweden The Riksdag ( , ; also or , ) is the parliament and the supreme decision-making body of the Kingdom of Sweden. Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral parliament with 349 members (), elected proportionally and serving, since 1994, f ...
was expected to change the law but ran into opposition from the
Christian Democrat Christian democracy is an ideology inspired by Christian ethics#Politics, Christian social teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics. Christian democracy has drawn mainly from Catholic social teaching and neo ...
party. After efforts to overturn the law failed in parliament, the Stockholm Administrative Court of Appeal overturned the law on 19 December 2012, declaring it unconstitutional after the law was challenged by an unidentified plaintiff.


See also

*
Reproductive rights Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to human reproduction, reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights: Reproductive rights ...
*
History of eugenics The history of eugenics is the study of development and advocacy of ideas related to eugenics around the world. Early eugenic ideas were discussed in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, Rome. The height of the modern eugenics movement came in the la ...


References

{{Europe in topic, Compulsory sterilisation in Eugenics in Sweden Political history of Sweden
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
Reproductive rights Sterilization (medicine) 1934 establishments in Sweden 2012 disestablishments in Sweden Disability in Sweden
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
Human rights abuses in Sweden