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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs which overturned Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, protests abounded; however, one type of protest is actually very interesting. Men and women are taking a hard look at sterilization as a means of birth control as they now cannot kill the baby in the womb.
The reason that I find this interesting is that when forced to take responsibility for engaging in behavior designed to result in a child, most people that supported abortion were content with ending the child’s life rather than preventing it. Contrary to all the lip service that was paid for “safe, legal, and rare”, we find that when the option of abortion is removed from the table in some states, they were fine with the safe and legal part, but not with rare.
Little had always been fairly certain that children weren’t part of his life plan. For years, his wife agreed. Now, recently divorced and dipping his toe back into the dating pool, he felt it was an appropriate time to seriously consider a vasectomy.
Snipped in solidarity: the American men getting vasectomies after Roe – while they can via “It’s been a long process… Then the Roe thing happened. That cemented it. That was the stars aligning. This needs to be done.”
Ok, multiple things to unpack here.
First, since when did dating necessitate sexual contact? Maybe I’m stuck in the past, but one way to be sure not to have issues with possible pregnancies is to avoid sexual contact during the dating phase– save sex for marriage. I mean, you get the benefit of protection from STIs, you don’t have to get surgical procedures so that you don’t get someone that you don’t have a commitment to pregnant, and best of all, you follow God’s plan for marriage/sex/family.
Second, who is banning vasectomies? Who is even suggesting that could be a thing? Ok, I understand that if you totally buy that abortion is nothing more than women’s healthcare, equivalent to birth control, AND you totally buy that what the Supreme Court and the state want to do is to force you to have children, then you might get to a place where someone wants to ban vasectomies, but still… The only time I’ve heard of a urologist not performing a vasectomy is if you’re making an irreversible decision such as to prevent them from being sued down the road because, “I’ve changed my mind, and I want to have kids!”
[Ilana] shares that she values her career “very much, and I know for a fact I can’t do both.” But more than that, Ilana says, “I also just….don’t want to be pregnant. When I tell people this, sometimes they get confused or uncomfortable because I’m a woman in my late 20s and they just assume that’s the next step for me. I would much prefer having a childfree household and my dog. I’m happy this way.”
Women say they ‘shouldn’t have to beg’ for a tubal ligation: ‘Motherhood is absolutely not for me’
Ilana, and other women’s requests for tubal litigations should be honored. The Pro-Life movement has always been about protecting a newly formed life, not about policing how you go about stopping it from happening. Seriously, there are some who claim pro-life and are against certain kinds of contraception because of what they believe about what the item does. Some would claim that the pill allows the baby to be conceived but not implanted into the uterine lining and have objections to it. But I’m not aware of anyone in the pro-life movement (or not a big segment) who would say that being sterilized is something that they’re trying to ban in terms of abortion.
If anything, a person’s choice to be sterilized is going to prevent abortion, which is a win for the pro-life cause. It’s teaching responsibility before instead of after. Regardless of whether the person being sterilized realizes that they are taking themselves and their beliefs out of the gene pool. They should be able to sign a legal document saying they are fine with never having children or more children, and then let her have it. That truly is women’s medical care.
