Women's Reproductive Rights
- Amy Compare
- Oct 23, 2020
- 3 min read
After seeing a Facebook post about how hard it is for women to have tubal ligations (“having your tubes tied” as a form of birth control), I decided to research this topic. I am pretty unaware of policies/laws/etc that are in place that take away my control of my own body, although I am hearing about it a lot on social media. I know I need to learn more, so I read up on the birth control methods of tubal ligation for women and vasectomies for men, and reflected on what I learned.
I had read some articles (and seen twitter threads) about women being denied the choice or having barriers to a choice to select tubal ligation as a method of birth control. It’s hard to tell how common it is to actually be denied a tubal ligation. While it seems like there is a higher risk of sterilization failing at younger ages, a slightly greater surgical risk than a vasectomy (because of the nature of the procedure), and possible ectopic pregnancy with sterilization failure, it sounds like most women who have written about being denied a tubal ligation have been denied because of a doctor’s unwillingness based on how they think the woman might feel in the future or because of how their husbands (actual or potential future husbands) might feel about it. In other words, although there seem to be legitimate medical reasons a doctor might not be willing to give a woman a tubal ligation, there are also cultural/societal factors at play that are involved (that shouldn’t be involved).
As far as policy, women trying to have this procedure done, whose health care is covered by Medicaid, are subjected to a 30 day waiting period, while men requesting vasectomies are not required to wait. While this system was started as a way to protect publicly insured women from forced sterilization, now it discriminates against publicly insured women by providing extra barriers to permanent contraception and restricting reproductive autonomy. This is not necessarily true of private insurance companies, although doctors can still refuse to perform the procedure.
While discrimination in tubal ligation is not as blatant as I thought it would be (and also it’s hard to tell without much evidence out there) and also tied to health risks, the question I find myself asking is if vasectomies are less invasive, less risky, have less side effects, potentially reversible, and cheaper, why are tubal ligations as contraceptive more common than vasectomies? Or why is the burden of birth control still largely placed on women? We’ve put people on the moon, so surely we can figure out birth control for men. It looks like there are methods in the works, but there are still none on the market.
While looking at barriers to a woman’s ability to choose sterilization, it is also important to recognize a lack of control on the other end of the spectrum in forced sterilizations. In the 20th century in the United States, 32 states maintained federally-funded eugenics boards tasked with sterilizations of women (and sometimes men) who were “undesirable.'' In 1927, the US Supreme Court decided to uphold a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person that was considered “unfit to procreate.” In 1965, ⅓ of women between the ages of 20 and 49 ad been sterilized, and between 1930 and 1970, more than 7600 sterilizations ordered by the state of North Carolina were done on Black women. In the 1970s, 25,000 Native American women were forcibly sterilized by the US government. Up to 70,000 people were forcibly sterilized in the 20th century, many of them disabled, poor, and minorities. Between 2006 and 2010, at least 148 female inmates in California prisons were coerced into sterilizations, and this year, there have been claims of hysterectomies performed on many women in ICE concentration camps. So not only are there barriers to even privileged women adopting permanent birth control through sterilization, but even more dire, forced sterilizations of women are rooted in the more recent history of the United States and continue to impact vulnerable populations of women today.
Overall, I know women’s reproductive rights have come a long way even in the past few decades, but just because they’re better, doesn’t mean they’re good enough. I also know that as a white woman not on public insurance, I am much more in control of my body than many other women. Everyone should have the right to be in control of what happens to their bodies, regardless of who they are, where they come from, or whatever situation they might be in. I have more reading to do about this, particularly around abortion which I hope to do in the next few weeks.
I read/skimmed a bunch of articles online, and I didn't organize them, but here they all are:
Comments