#vasectomies

Um, they’re reversible and yeah, wifey is funny af

But before doing so, I decided to look up whether Tennessee really has such a law, and Google flatly denied it (some info did pop up about minors' rights to birth control in Tennessee being in question until 2024, but that minors can obtain it today, albeit with parental permission).

Today I found that Facebook post again and saw a bunch of comments from other women, in Tennessee and several other states, who either were told they couldn't get birth control without their husbands signing off on it or were told the same thing about getting their tubes tied. Other women chimed in expressing shock, one of whom (apparently also in Tennessee?) mentioned that her doctors gave her no such enforcement. One male commenter attested to not being allowed to have a vasectomy without his wife/partner signing off on it as their (collective) decision; my friend who wrote the post believed him and responded sympathetically.

Obviously I don't think my friend, let alone all these other people, would be lying (at worst, they could be misinterpreting the description of the rule they were told, but to think that all those people are is a stretch), so what is going on here?

Carter Sherman at The Guardian:

In the months after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, permanent contraception in the form of tubal sterilizations and vasectomies surged among young adults living in states likely to ban abortion, new research released on Monday found. Compared to May 2022, when the opinion overturning Roe leaked, August 2022 saw 95% more vasectomies and 70% more tubal sterilizations performed on people between the ages of 19 and 26, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers at the George Washington University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan.

In addition to analyzing data about medical visits for permanent contraception before and after the opinion’s leak, the researchers also examined survey responses from more than 600 people between the ages of 14 and 24 who were asked about the fall of Roe. “It has made me want to be sterilized more,” said one 24-year-old female survey respondent from the US south. “The pill isn’t 100% effective and I’m afraid of losing access to it, and I do not want children in the future and would much rather be sterilized. I’m afraid of getting pregnant and not being able to make decisions for myself.”

Published in the journal Health Affairs, the study also found that, overall, tubal sterilizations – which surgically alter women’s fallopian tubes and are colloquially known as “getting tubes tied” – were more popular than vasectomies. There were about seven more tubal sterilizations performed per state a month in the second half of 2022, compared to roughly three more vasectomies a month per state. That popularity probably reflects the longstanding expectation that women shoulder the burden of contraception. But Julia Strasser, the study’s lead author, suspects that there may be other reasons, too.