Scarleteen

I hope it's okay to vent here because I feel pretty indignant about it.

I was going to wait until 30 and ask for a tubal ligation I felt I would be refused until then because women "need" to reproduce and if we don't, we'recommend just malfunctioning at the moment and our biological clocks will start ticking like crazy and we'll inevitably go baby-mad. Some people do. Some people don't. Like Really Don't. I present as a point my brother's wife. She is 35, (he'said 40) has no children, has chronic health problems after the birth control pill screwed up her hormones to the point of no return and like me, no maternal desire. My brother wants his wife to be healthy and could be swayed on kids but he married her knowing she "probably would not change her mind about never wanting them. A statement she said at 23 and like me again, waited until in her 30s to take permanent measures, only not 30, 35. She was tired of the false positive pregnancy tests (The are rare but not as uncommon as most places lead you to believe), the paranoia, the flare ups and thoughts of how she'd handle them if she had kids. I have similar experience, no desire for kids, a partner with the same lack of desire and we both have health problems to back up our claims. Well she talked to her gyno the other day and was denied. A 35 year old woman cannot possibly know her own body and mind. What if she changes it! What if she has another partner someday who does want kids? Well maybe they'really just not compatible. Maybe it's as simple as that. Does that sort of thing happen to men who want a vasectomy? My understanding was upper 20s, you can usually get one. Why is this still be debated for women? Is this common? I live in the US.

hey Ihatemyusername,

A 35 year old woman cannot possibly know her own body and mind. What if she changes it! What if she has another partner someday who does want kids?

How frustrating is having those conversations?! Having children or not is a personal choice and not one that needs to be dissected by every person we come across assuming they know us better than we can know ourselves!

You put out a couple of questions there, here's my two pennies worth...

From what I'm seeing this is still an ongoing battle for many people, there have been many high-profile cases in recent times of women in their 20's spending many years advocating for themselves and being refused, often stating that their partners of the same age being offered vasectomies. In the US there are regulations in place to protect vulnerable women from forced or coerced sterilisation, these mean that "Medicaid-funded sterilizations require a 30-day waiting period between consent and the procedure (except in the special circumstances of premature delivery or emergency abdominal surgery in the setting of prior consent) and that the patient be at least 21 years old and mentally competent." So far, fair enough.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) published a piece on ethical considerations surrounding female sterilisation, with accompanying guidelines, the first line of which is "Respect for an individual woman’s reproductive autonomy should be the primary concern guiding sterilization provision and policy."

Doctors do have an ethical duty to ensure that anyone seeking sterilisation understands the irreversibility of the procedure and the potential for regret later in life, and to ensure that they are giving full, free, informed consent. Some studies have found that the rates of regret are higher for women under 30 or for men under 31, yet oftentimes it is easier for those seeking vasectomies to access treatment. However, the ACOG goes on to state that younger and childless women should still be able to opt for sterilisation.

So the guidelines say that if you are informed and know yourself, your right to make your own decisions should be respected. As for why it's still debated for women, people have probably written whole books on the subject, but I guess it boils down to living in a society that doesn't teach us to respect all people's ability to make decisions for themselves about their bodies. You summed it up pretty well in your opening sentence or two.

The stories I've come across tend to follow a pattern of requests over a number of years, building a body of evidence to support the decision and getting opinions from multiple doctors.