Forced abortion after seven months pregnancy

This week I met a women from Gothenburg that grew up the very same period as me. She had a brother, just as me. I got another brother a few years later. But when her mother got pregnant she was forced to an abortion when she was already in the 7th month of pregnancy. The social secretary also told her that she had to be sterilized if she wanted to keep the other two children. She was but 22 years old then. Two families in Sweden during late fifties, early sixties. So similar, and still so big differences.

The only crime her mother was accused with was that she was a traveller. A invisible group in the society, sometimes associated with the Roma group, sometimes not. They speak a Roma language and share some of the culture. Still they are not showing identity in any particular way. Forced sterilisations on certain groups, e g travellers, were done until the beginning of the 70ties. Nobody know how many victims there are, many that suffered are ashamed to talk about it.

The last couple of days I have been moderating a conference about the Roma and Travellers group that was arranged by the Swedish governments delegation for Roma and Travellers issues. The chairman Maria Leissner from the Liberal party and the minister responsible for discrimination and gender equality Nyamko Sabuni both participated.

Today we spoke a lot about what is happening in Italy with the Roma group, (I wrote about in on my Swedish blog). It reminds a lot of what happened to the Jews.

Romans has been in Sweden for more than 500 years. They were also victims of the Holocaust, possibly half a million was killed by the Nazi regime for racial reasons. Only two Roma women were allowed to get in to the white busses that rescued so many Jews, and that was only because they thought they were Jews. We should feelt guilt and shame for this, But very few even know about it.

But there are also certain positive developments that need to be mentioned. More Romans today are trying to organize themselves and are fighting for their rights in various ways. As Soraya Post, the name of the woman I mentioned that lost her second brother. She sits in the board of European Roma and Travellers Forum and is chairman of International Roma Women’s Network.

Soraya Posts mother was encouraged to start a juridical process that in the end was quite successful. Her case made other men and women that were forced to sterilization to also raise up and claim their right.