The mass implantation of IUDs amounted to “involuntary, forced acts of mutilation,” Han Haoyue, a popular columnist, wrote in a post shared nearly 3,000 times on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “And now, to say they are offering free removal as a service to these tens of millions of women — repeatedly broadcasting this on state television as a kind of state benefit — they have no shame, second to none.”

Over the years, many Chinese women have come to hate the IUD, which is inserted into the uterus to block fertilization. In the novel “Frog,” by Mo Yan, the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, the main character imposes a reign of terror involving the compulsory implantation of IUDs and tries to catch women who surreptitiously remove them.

In mainland China, being fitted with an IUD is called “shang huan,” a phrase that literally means “installing a loop,” referring to the low-cost, stainless steel ring that was the state’s preferred device for more than a decade despite higher rates of complications. The rings were replaced in the mid-1990s by safer and more effective IUDs.

According to gynecologists in China, IUDs used for Chinese women were meant to be left indefinitely, with surgery necessary to take them out.

Dr. Gloria Korta, a gynecologist at Winchester Physician Associates in Massachusetts, who toured Chinese hospitals as part of a cultural exchange in 2001, said that while there was a risk of infection from having an IUD implanted for many years, it was small.

Perhaps because of the problems associated with the early model, there remains widespread concern in China about the IUD’s impact on women’s health. In 2012, the online portal Tencent published a lengthy report arguing that many Chinese women had “experienced serious damage to their mental and physical health” from the IUD campaign because of “rough surgeries and poor hygiene conditions.”

Ai Xiaoming, 63, a prominent documentary filmmaker, said many women, herself included, had never been advised of potential complications and the need for regular checkups after getting an IUD. She had to have a hysterectomy when surgery to remove her IUD was botched.