Compulsory sterilisation in Sweden

Compulsory sterilisation in Sweden (Swedish: Tvångssterilisering i Sverige) occurred between 1934 and 2012. The objectives of the programme included racial purity, public health, reducing public expenditure and reduction of antisocial behaviour. Forced sterilisation was considered an important tool in the country's crime prevention programme.

According to the 2000 governmental report, 21,000 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.^[1] However, the 40,000 or so socio-medical cases are contested, and Zaremba and others argue that they were more in the interest of society than individual women. The Swedish state subsequently paid out damages to victims who contacted the authorities and asked for compensation.

The program included all known criteria for sterilisation. They were summed up in three indications:^[2]

• Medical if a pregnancy could seriously put a woman suffering from chronic illness or permanently weakened constitution at risk of life and health.
• Eugenisk indication meant sterilisation could be done if a person's offspring would receive undesired genes for insanity, severe illness or physical handicap of other kind.
• Social indication allowed sterilisation for someone evidently unsuitable to foster a child due to mental illness, being feebleminded or other distortion of the psyche, or having an asocial lifestyle.

In 1922 the State Institute of Racial Biology was founded in Uppsala^[3] and in 1927 Parliament began to deal with the first legal provisions on sterilisation.^[4] A new draft was produced in 1932, already taking into account sterilization for general socio-prophylactic reasons, and even without the consent of the person concerned.^[4] The draft was adopted in 1934.^[4] Another law, passed in 1941, was more far reaching, included a social indication and did not include any age of consent limit.

From 1950, the number of eugenic sterilizations under the 1941 legal provisions gradually decreased.^[4] These were sometimes viewed as a separate race or ethnic group. The Swedish Racial Hygiene Society had been founded in Stockholm in 1909, and the 1934 works by Alva and Gunnar Myrdal was very significant in promoting the eugenic tendencies in practical politics. The authors theorized that the best solution for the Swedish welfare state ("folkhem") was to prevent at the outset the hereditary transfer of undesirable characteristics that caused the individual affected to become sooner or later a burden on society. The authors therefore proposed a "corrective social reform" under which sterilization was to prevent "nonviable individuals" from spreading their undesirable traits.^[4]

In Sweden, sterilization was only mandatory before sex change.^[5] This last mandatory sterilization has been criticized by several political parties in Sweden and since 2011 the Parliament of Sweden was expected to change the law but ran into opposition from the Christian Democrat party. After efforts to overturn the law failed in parliament, the Stockholm Administrative Court of Appeal overturned the law Dec. 19, declaring it unconstitutional^[6][7] after the law was challenged by an unidentified plaintiff.

See also

• Compulsory sterilization
• Folkhemmet
• History of eugenics

References