Expanded Sterilization Law 1941

In 1941 Sweden passed SFS 1941:282, superseding the 1934 law. The expansion added “antisocial” individuals as an explicit sterilization category alongside those already covered — the mentally ill and the “feeble-minded.” The law was passed by the Per Albin Hansson wartime national-unity government (samlingsregering), which included all four major parties: Social Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals, and Agrarians.

The “antisocial” classification was deliberately broad. Later investigations confirmed it was applied to people with habitual criminal records, persistent welfare dependency, Roma and Traveller identity, and broadly non-conforming behaviour. The government’s 2000 report found that an estimated 600–700 individuals were sterilized based primarily on ethnic classification — identified as Roma or tattare. Journalist Maciej Zaremba documented that Roma and Sinti were targeted through “divergerande levnadssätt” (deviating lifestyle) rather than explicit genetic criteria: racial targeting was operationalized through social-welfare language, not race law.

The 1941 expansion coincided with the program’s highest-volume period. Annual figures from archival sources: 1945: 1,747 sterilizations; 1946: 1,847; 1948: 2,264 — six per day, the annual record. This peak occurred during the same years the welfare state was being institutionally built and SAP rule was most consolidated. Sweden, officially neutral, passed its expansion the same year as Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, while the Nazi regime operated its own forced sterilization programme. The Swedish establishment maintained that its program was medical and social — not racial — in character, despite the documented ethnic targeting.

Across the full program under both laws (1935–1975), approximately 63,000 people were sterilized; 93% were women; roughly half under conditions of coercion. Both laws were replaced by a consent-based framework in 1975. Recognition came only after Zaremba’s 1997 investigation.