Episode 15: Snatching Kids, Greenland, and Racism

Hello, and welcome back to birthzillas: the newscast. This week we’re going to be talking about a major issue in reproductive justice: child separation. I have some of my own baggage on this, with three of my sisters being taken out of my mother’s custody (and the other one and I leaving semi voluntarily). But this is an issue in the news right now, not just with regards to ICE in the US but in Denmark taking a newborn baby out of her Greenlandic mother’s custody for failing to pass a state-mandated test.This is going to get complicated, and I’ll try to explain it the best I can. I apologize to everyone involved if I pronounce your names incorrectly, my Danish is non-existent, so I’m doing my best.Let’s go!(insert transition music)As I talked about last time with Dr Breisacher, I work in reproductive justice research, not just reproductive rights. What’s the difference? Well, reproductive justice was founded by about 13 Back women who wanted to include all aspects of the reproductive journey and not just abortion/contraception. When other women (yes, white liberals) ignored them, they just went out and started a movement and scholarly stream that said: you should be allowed to not be pregnant, but that you should also be allowed to BE pregnant AND to raise your children in a safe environment.Why the addition? Because for white women, especially non-poor white women, the struggle has been to not be pregnant when they don’t want to. So, abortion, contraception, and making marital rape a crime. These are all good goals, but they also ignore what non-white women and a lot of poor white women have also faced: not being allowed to have children or not being allowed to keep children.There is a history of reproductive coercion in the form of forced mandatory sterilization (from hysterectomies to “tubes tied” to experiments with long-term birth control without consent). There’s a documentary called L’Operation which centers the US government’s deliberate involvement in a plan to sterilize (often without their consent) a massive portion of women in Puerto Rico. The numbers are see are that in the ‘70s, 30-35% of Puerto Rican women were permanently sterilized, again, many without consent.This isn’t the distant past, either. While Black women were used as slave-producers and had their children stolen from them, once those children were no longer profits for rich, white folks, Black women became the targets of campaigns to forcibly sterilize them. Hysterectomies became so common they were called the “Mississippi appendectomy.” In Becker’s new book the Politics of Hysterectomy, she talks about how even today when dealing with reproductive issues white women and Asian women tend to have to fight for hysterectomy while Black and Latine women are offered, encouraged, and coerced into them.And let’s not forget the doctor during the Trump 1 ICE detainments who was known as “the uterus collector” who forced permanent sterilization onto people who could not give full consent.So, like, the ability to keep your ability to have kids is a deeply political and historically rooted issue.What about the third thing? The ability to keep and raise children in a safe environment? Well, as Dr. Breisacher and I discussed, taking children away from their families and giving them to other families to erase their identity is cultural genocide. This is something that is currently happening in Ukraine with hundreds of children missing (or as it’s actually known, being trafficked) and showing up on Russian adoption websites.These laws come from the global attacks on indigenous people in dang near every country where indigenous people lived. The US, Canada, and Australia, in particular have finally been open about their truly horrible histories of native children removal. (but we’ll circle back to this)In the US it wasn’t just Native American schools (where white people would take children from indigenous families and torture them and otherwise try to break their spirits). It goes back again to slavery. Black women were raped and forced to have children and then those children were stolen from them and sold to other people. It’s still unclear to me why slavery isn’t considered genocide. Like, is it because we wanted to work them to death before they died?But this goes into a long history of snatching people’s kids.Now for the main issue of our story. Ivana Nikoline Brønlund, a young Greenlandic mother (and if you don’t know, Greenlanders are indigenous people, though Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark even though it is a self-governing land since 2009.Why does this matter? Well, Ivana is Greenlandic, born to Greenlandic parents. The history of indigenous erasure. This kind of racism and supremacy is not something you get rid of with a policy, and sure enough, despite (as reported) going through multiple conversation before her child was born, she was still forced to endure the torture of newborn separation.So, what’s up with these parental competency tests? Well, they are meant to measure competency, but not like we think of it with say, early parenting classes. This isn’t really about “how do you change a diaper” or “how to breastfeed,” but it’s more a psychological test. What’s the problem? Tanya Dutt of Health and Me.com describes elements of the test: “The test assessed parents in a series of areas, such as their responses to imagined scenarios, self-concept, physical and mental well-being, outlook on life, and plans for the future. Most importantly, it was based on Western conception of good parenthood and delivered in Danish, with minimal attention to Greenlandic language, customs, or kinship systems. This incompatibility resulted in regular misinterpretations of the capacity of Greenlandic parents and sometimes led to children being taken from their parents.” Around 1% of Danish cases result in child removal. But when you study Greenlandic families, the cases rise to 5-7%. That is a large difference.In fact, in both 2022 and 2023, not only Danish Human Rights groups, but the United Nations found this test to be culturally bias. This resulted in the test NOT being applied to Greenlandic parents, like Ivana.Ivanna was told she “wasn’t Greenlandic enough” for the exception to count for her. Instead of going for some low intervention help, the Danish government chose to remove the child at one-hour old. If you know anything about child development, the first 24 hours are known as “the Golden Hours” because there are a host of emotional and developmental impacts of parent-child bonding that go on. This is why skin-to-skin contact with both parents, but especially the gestational parent—is seen as vital to infant wellness during these first hours. Not only was Ivana Denied this, but her baby was too. This could actually leave lasting trauma on the child. And will almost certainly lead to lasting trauma on the part of the mother.It's so distressing to see this kind of racist separation being played out in this day and age. Really, any time is bad, but we know so much about how flawed and problematic this test was that the government claims to have stopped doing it. Unfortunately, that’s not been the case.(transition music)While it was nice to focus on a policy outside the US that sucks, it’s time to wrap up for the day. Keep your eye on the news and see what happens with this case. In the meantime, think about how these legacies of child separation still shape policy today. In the US this is a major problem with social services and protocols for family separation.Next week, we’ll be back with whatever fresh hell I can find for you. Until then, take care of yourselves, and each other! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit birthzillas.substack.com