Interview with Maija Runcis,  
archivist and researcher  
of the University of Stockholm    

 What did you find out in the State Archives where you were working?   
I found sealed documents. When I opened them I saw that they were requests and records of sterilisation. The first case that attracted my attention concerned a priest reporting a student who lacked concentration at school.  
  
What period did such records go back to?    
To the 1930s and 40s. I thought the story was due to religious issues.    

When did you change your mind?    
When I re-examined the documents more carefully. Then I realised the priests were not involved and that it was an extremely radical project inspired by Social Democratic theories...    

Social Democratic?    
Yes. The debate on the purity of the race, on the elimination of genetic defects involved both Right and Left representatives in that period.    

What were the most widespread opinions?    
Well, the Right thought the individual had to be protected by the authorities and the institutions. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, claimed that sometimes the individual, as he belonged to society, could be the victim of what was considered as “best” for society.    

Was the 1935 law born in this way?    
Yes, partly. The Right had also tried to devise a similar  law but failed to reach a unitary proposal. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, achieved their goal following a specific strategy of welfare state...    

Welfare state?    
It may sound strange... but it was exactly like this. The 1935 law was written after a 15-year debate. At the same time the Uppsala's Institute profited to carry out its research on hereditary diseases. It also asked the State more funds for its projects. These funds never arrived because of the backlash when Nazism went to power in Germany.    

What was the professionals' reaction when the law was passed?    
At the beginning physicians were not very happy about it as only lunatics and the handicapped should have been sterilised according to the law. They wanted to involve other categories of people for a “wider selection”. Thus, a commission was set up to choose other groups who could undergo the operation.    

Can you make an example?    
Many subsidies were given to single mothers in that period. Such costs could have been eliminated by starting a sterilisation programme for these people.    

What was the outcome of these theories?    
In 1941 individuals considered as asocial or who led a disorderly life were included in the programme. The government decided that those who did not live in an “ordinary” way could and had to be sterilised. To put it plainly, as lots of subsidies were given to people who could not support themselves autonomously, the government chose this method to save money.    

Who was reported?    
Many poor people, many single mothers, individuals who lived in orphanages.    

In other words, an absurd control over people's life was being carried out. Was that so?    
Well, the victims were mostly women whose sexual life was thought to be too free.  Even women seen alone in public or with a man sometimes were reported. Men were rarely sterilised, except prisoners, violent men or those who left school when they were young.    

What are the figures for men and women?    
Ten thousand people were sterilised in the first years of the law: 60% were women and the remaining 40% were men. In 1945 the number of the operations increased and then stabilised in 1946 when a law on economic support for the poor and needy families was passed.    
The ratio then worsened for women: the percentage grew to 95%. It remained like this until the 1970s when the law, whose effects had involved 63 thousand people, was eliminated.    

Didn't someone react against the enforcement of the law in the past years?    
Yes, women in the 1960s. They told themselves: “Why are only women sterilised?”. They tried to make the law change so that it could affect rapists or maladjusted men.    
But little was actually done. Rewriting the law meant to put in question what had been done until then. It wasn't worth it and it was decided to sterilise only women who had had too many children.    

Do you think that all those people were forced to obey?    
It's hard to say. They probably were but the constraint was far more refined than it may seem. Just think that many women were induced to be sterilised when they went to their doctor for some advice. Others did not want to have children or did not want to have intercourse with their husbands. These women were normally poor and influenced by alcoholist husbands. In such cases it was thought that it was better to sterilise a woman than to break up a family.    

How is it possible that the Swedish people accepted all this? What is your opinion?   
The justification lies in the fact that, in that period, the Swedish truly believed in the State and in the Social Democratic party's theories to improve health conditions and the welfare state.    
Are you ready to accept the criticism when you publish your study?    
Yes, I am. I know that I will be accused by all those who contributed to build the so-called “people's house”. My criticism, however, is indelible.    

Interview with  
Barbro Ingeborg Eriksson,  
sterilised    

What's your story, Mrs Ingeborg?    
My name is Barbro Luisine and I was forced to sterilise in 1946.    

What was the exact date?    
I can't remember exactly. I was an only child. My parents used to fight a lot. One day they decided to get divorced and I found myself completely alone. I used to work in a pharmacy where an older girl took care of me.    

Did that girl play a role in your story?    
Well, somehow she did. One night we went to a party and later I had an epilepsy fit. All I can remember is that when I woke up I saw my friend's alarmed face and a doctor near her.    

How old were you then?    
I was 16... then that doctor said I was epileptic.    

What happened next?    
I went to him for four years, at least once a month. He gave me drugs. I was terrified by the news on my health. I shut myself home. But one day I found love... a handsome and young boy. Some time later I got pregnant.    

Were you happy?    
Happy? I was glowing with happiness. I told my doctor about it. He had become a friend for me in all those years. So I told him and my ordeal began.    

Why? Wasn't he happy? Wasn't he a friend of yours?    
I thought he was a friend but when I told him he got really angry. “You are not a responsible person - he shouted - how can you think you can have a child... you are sick, you are epileptic...”.    

How did that meeting end?    
He said he would help me after all. “I want to help you anyway - he said. The only thing we can do is to make you  have an abortion and then have you sterilised”.    

Your words sound terrible.    
It was terrible for me, too. I was desperate. Then I went to the hospital where they confirmed that I was pregnant.    

What did they tell you about your doctor's decisions?    
They didn't want me to have immediately an abortion. They wanted me to see a psychiatrist. I did so and the psychiatrist made me an intelligence test. He said that I was not a sick person. “You are completely normal - he claimed - you are healthy. I think you can have this child - he added - and afterwards we can sterilise you and scientifically see if the baby inherited your disease”. I got really angry: I didn't want to give life to a baby to make it become a guinea pig. Besides, I had a strange feeling... as if I wanted to disobey my doctor's orders... Anyway I made other exams. Doctors saw some photographs taken when I was 16 and they told me that my face was... how can you say it? ... childish, that I looked a little crazy. Some doctors said I had to be sterilised, other psychiatrists said the opposite.    
How were you feeling in that situation?    
Very bad. They just kept on discussing and I couldn't say anything. I was angry. No one could help me. I didn't even know where my parents were. I refused to talk with my friends because my doctor had convinced me that my disease was something one should be ashamed of. Then I left the hospital. I went home and I tried to take my life. My cousin found me and I was taken to the hospital. I woke up and cried that I didn't want to live anymore.    
Doctors didn't know what to do. I was sent to a mental hospital. There I waited and waited. Then they decided  I had to abort. I was taken to the hospital but I couldn't be anaesthetised because I had a cold. I could hear my baby moving inside of me and I cried, I didn't know how to get out of all that. They asked me: “Why are you crying?”. I said “I don't want to be sterilised”. They said: “But you asked to be sterilised...”    

What happened after the abortion and the sterilisation?    
I can't remember everything. I felt like an epileptic. I had been told that I couldn't do anything: I couldn't drive, marry, going to school, or have an insurance. Then the intelligence test I made came to my mind. That test said that I was healthy, that I wasn't stupid. So I decided to lie, I would have stopped saying I was sick.    
I began to study and did a course to become a nurse. Many years later a doctor asked me why I was taking so many drugs and I told him I was epileptic. He asked me about my life, then made me have some tests to understand how my brain was working.    

What was the result?    
He said I had never been epileptic and that my problems had probably been due to a serious nervous breakdown.    
What did you feel in that moment?    
Anger. My former doctor and his diagnosis had ruined my life. I still ask myself why he did that.   

How do you answer yourself?    
Well, there was a law that enabled him. Then I knew he killed himself: he was a Nazi.    

Do you think the State should be held responsible for you story?    
I absolutely think so. Those who made that law wanted a chosen race, a society of rich, intelligent people. Minister Margot Wallstroem did apologise and promised an economic reimbursement but feelings, emotions, people were destroyed... what is the price of people?    
The truth is that this society still hasn't understood what happened in this country.    

Interview with  
Maj Britt Karlsson,    
sterilised   

What is your story Mrs Karlsson?    
My name is Maj Britt Karlsson. I'm seventy years old. I'm a divorced woman and have two children. Actually, I got pregnant for the third time. I had a tiny house. I had no room for all of us. I couldn't have another child. I decided to have an abortion.    

Did you consult you doctor?    
Yes, I did. I told him about my situation and tried to tell him how terrible that choice was for me, but that it was inevitable. He listened to me and then told me that what I was saying made no sense, that what I was asking was impossible and that I was behaving like a mentally sick person.    
He sent me to a psychologist with a letter he had written. I told him the whole story again. The psychologist, after reading his colleague's letter, told me I couldn't have an abortion unless I consented to be sterilised afterwards. “Your doctor wrote it”, was his answer.    

What was your reaction?    
I felt blackmailed. I tried to react but the psychologist told me that that was the only thing to do because he thought I would have got pregnant again after the abortion. A few days later I received a letter from my doctor stating that I had accepted to be sterilised.    

Did you go to the hospital?    
Yes, I did. While I was in my room, a doctor came in and asked me how I felt. I said I was depressed and angry because I could have an abortion provided I would be sterilised afterwards. He said that he had read my clinical record and that I had actually asked to be sterilised. I got really wild and I told him that I just wanted to have an abortion and that maybe I would have wanted to have another child in the future if conditions improved.    

What happened next?    
You can imagine it. They made exams. I was treated like a beast. They put a hot tool inside my vagina, and I don't know why. I was sick, desperate. Then one day they suddenly took me in the operating theatre. I woke up and found I had had an abortion. I was a woman cut in half. I had been sterilised. I was only 26.    

Thanks for your testimony.