Denmark, in turn, has been scrambling to keep Greenlanders on its side. It is suddenly doing all sorts of things that Greenlanders had been demanding for years. One of them was changing the parental competency test, which is referred to by one long word in Danish: the For\u00e6ldrekompetenceunders\u00f8gelse. Another has been to address historical misdeeds.<\/p>\n
Just this past week Danish and Greenlandic researchers released a scathing 347-page report that detailed the Danish government\u2019s past campaign of forcing contraception on a whole generation of Greenlandic women and girls, some as young as 12 and many kept in the dark about what was being done to them. The Danish prime minister even offered a long-awaited official apology for this and other wrongs done to Greenland.<\/p>\n
Activists say that Bronlund\u2019s case is proof of how the wrongs never seem to end, especially when it comes to Greenlandic women.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistory is simply repeating itself,\u201d says Najannguaq Hegelund, vice-chairwoman of Sila 360, an organisation focusing on Indigenous peoples\u2019 rights, based in Denmark. She called the case \u201ccolonial wreckage,\u201d saying it was evidence of the stubborn stereotype that Greenlanders cannot take care of their own children.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is so embedded in Danish society that Greenlandic parents are automatically defined as unfit,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Bronlund\u2019s ordeal started in December, when she was 17 and found out she was pregnant. She went for a scan and saw \u201ca tiny heart beating \u2013 that was incredible\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n
She wondered whether having an abortion would damage something in her body that might prevent her from having children down the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of that was running through my mind,\u201d she says. \u201cBut most of all, I just couldn\u2019t bear the thought of killing the foetus. So I decided to keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to documents, the Children and Youth Committee in her municipality, west of Copenhagen, started a welfare investigation in January.<\/p>\n
Bronlund says she was subjected to interviews with psychologists, meetings with social workers, standardised psychological evaluations and IQ tests that measured her ability to manipulate shapes and do maths problems, which she says she was never good at. Traditionally the parenting investigations involved a series of interviews and standardised tests.<\/p>\n
Authorities declined to discuss details of Bronlund\u2019s case, citing privacy concerns.<\/p>\n
Bronlund never fit into a neat category, she says. She was born in Greenland, adopted by a couple who moved to mainland Denmark and dropped out of school in the seventh grade. She was working as a babysitter and played on Greenland\u2019s national youth handball team. When she was growing up, she was sexually abused by her father. He was eventually convicted and sent to prison, where he remains.<\/p>\n
\nShe\u2019s fighting for her baby. Isn\u2019t that what you want a good mother to do?<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Maria Rubin Nicolajsen, a volunteer in Bronlund\u2019s community<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The paperwork said that she was treated as any other Dane and not as a Greenlander because she was \u201craised in Danish culture and with Danish language\u201d.<\/p>\n
Authorities across Denmark use parenting tests, but they are not applied to the entire population \u2013 only to families in which there are already welfare concerns. Denmark has recently strengthened child-protection laws and as a result made it easier for the state to override a parent and even remove their child from their home.<\/p>\n
The new rules about how these assessments should be applied to the Greenlandic community in Denmark took effect in May, when Bronlund was six months pregnant. Under the new rules, standardised psychological tests should no longer be used; instead, Greenlandic families are supposed to undergo specialised screenings that are more culturally sensitive.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t happen, and in June she was called in for a meeting.<\/p>\n
She met a psychologist, bracing for the evaluation. The psychologist delivered her recommendation: that Bronlund\u2019s baby be taken away from her after birth.<\/p>\n
Bronlund was in shock at the news, and just sat in a room and cried.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said I couldn\u2019t provide what the child needed, and that I wasn\u2019t ready to be a mother,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
According to the documents, the evaluation team concluded that she was \u201cnot able to ensure her child\u2019s wellbeing and development\u201d and that she had \u201ca great need for extensive psychiatric and social support,\u201d which her family believes is an unfair conclusion based on the sexual abuse she suffered as a child.<\/p>\n
She and the activists who have amassed around her believe that the judgment is wrong on many levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer father did something to her years ago, and now she has to pay?\u201d says Maria Rubin Nicolajsen, a volunteer in Bronlund\u2019s community who helps families navigate the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
Nicolajsen shared these thoughts at a small protest earlier this month outside the municipal government\u2019s headquarters, complete with megaphones, posters and a carton of iced tea as a refreshment.<\/p>\n
Bronlund is \u201ca very sweet girl. She doesn\u2019t drink. She doesn\u2019t smoke. Nothing,\u201d says Nicolajsen. \u201cAnd she\u2019s fighting for her baby. Isn\u2019t that what you want a good mother to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bronlund continues to pump milk. She gets up in the middle of the night to do it. Every other week, she is allowed a two-hour visit with her baby, whom she has named Aviaja-Luuna.<\/p>\n
She has appealed her case, and Tuesday, a national board will review the findings. Denmark\u2019s minister for social affairs and housing, Sophie H\u00e6storp Andersen, has already stated that \u201ca severe mistake has been made\u201d, saying that local authorities failed to follow the new law.<\/p>\n
Local authorities said, in the paperwork that the family has shared, that they applied a standardised psychological test to Bronlund, \u201cwhich was not in line\u201d with the new policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch tests should not be used in cases involving Greenlandic families,\u201d the local officials wrote, and \u201cthe municipality regrets this error.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the municipal officials said, in the documents, that they didn\u2019t rely purely on the tests and even without them, they would have still have had a \u201csufficient basis\u201d to put the baby in foster care. Local authorities said they relied on many inputs to reach their conclusion, including interviews with Bronlund and a referral from the police.<\/p>\n
![\"Ivana](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/NGGHOGS4H6SDHKU5Z7YBXXBLIQ.jpg\")
Ivana Bronlund with her mother, Gitte Bronlund, at their home. Photograph: Hilary Swift\/The New York Times<\/p>\n
If she loses her appeal, Bronlund has no feasible way to keep the baby in her family. If her mother takes the baby, she says she has been told, she will have to move out. She declined to comment on the baby\u2019s father.<\/p>\n
Bronlund says the hardest part of the whole experience was the moment she said goodbye to her daughter.<\/p>\n
Two people from the municipality walked into the delivery room. They were dressed in white. They said she had one hour left with her baby and then she would have to give her over to a foster couple.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the best hour of my life,\u201d says Bronlund. \u201cI held her and felt her against me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She whispered to her child that she loved her more than anything on Earth and that she would fight for her every day, day and night.<\/p>\n
And then she wrapped her in a blanket, handed Aviaja-Luuna to her mother and watched her baby be carried away. \u2013 This article originally appeared in the New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ivana Bronlund is a mother without a child. An hour after her daughter was born in a small…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,382,356,13,14,17768,6,11,12,15,16,5,2973,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-85028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-denmark","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-greenland","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-parenting","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Ivana](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/44DIB3IU5AGM57L3X5Q3ZC4SOI.jpg\")
Ivana Bronlund holds a sonogram of her baby. Photograph: Hilary Swift\/The New York Times<\/p>\n