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Denmark’s health minister has called for free sterilisation for female alcoholics and drug addicts to help prevent birth defects in children. Bertel Haarder is proposing that the DKK 13,000 (EUR 1,744) fee for surgical sterilisation should be waived for certain vulnerable groups.
Haarder claims that drug addicts and alcoholics run a significantly higher risk of giving birth to deformed babies, which would cost society more in the long run than the sterilisation fee. “We’re talking about relatively few women here, so I hope we can find the means to help them,” he said.
Socialist People’s Party spokesperson, Ozlem Cekic, also said it is contradictory that costly abortions are free to addicts on the public health service but sterilisation is not. … (Source: Alcohol Reports, 02/28/11) icenews.is, 02/25/11 Comment: At the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th century the idea of sterilisation was in discussion. The Swiss psychiatrist and leading international specialist on alcoholism, Prof. August Forel (1848-1931), wrote on this subject: Eugenik. In the 1980th there was criticism about this comparing with Nazi-ideology.