Is this sexism?: “Doctors often reluctant to sterilize young women”

Last updated on: May 13, 2014 at 8:53 am by Jane the Actuary

Is this sexism?: “Doctors often reluctant to sterilize young women” 2014-05-13T08:53:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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That’s the article in today’s Tribune, a profile of childless women in their 20s who have a hard time convincing their OB-GYN to perform a tubal ligation operation on them. The doctors are worried that these women will regret this later, not so much out of a fear of lawsuits as just a general reluctance to do something that has a potential of causing harm rather than helping their patients, in the long term.

The accusation is this:

In interviews and on Internet forums, women report facing resistance and flat-out refusal from health care providers as they seek permanent contraception. Along the way, they encounter sexist and paternalistic attitudes, such as the assumption that all women desire children or that they’ll come to regret their decision.

And

“information on the Internet indicates that child-free men have almost no trouble finding a doctor to perform a vasectomy,” [researcher Cristina Richie] wrote in the Hastings Center Report. “This fits with the view that men are less bound by cultural norms of parenthood and more competent to make decisions.

Which seems a bit of a stretch.

I’ve long heard that men are required to get their wives’ consent before getting a vasectomy, though a quick internet search reveals that’s not a legal requirement and is either something imposed by some doctors, or wholly an urban legend. But, assuming that it is indeed an urban legend (or means that married men face a roadblock but not the unmarried), and the report is correct that doctors don’t hesitate to perform the procedure on even young, childless men, the two situations don’t seem entirely comparable, since (a) so far as I understand, while the success rate at reversal is still not a sure thing, it is more of a possibility for men, and, (b) even if not, artificial insemination with donor sperm is a less arduous process than the equivalent for women, and, so far as I know, a much more acceptable option to the couples involved.

The decision, at a young age, to make oneself permanently sterile, is a life-changing decision, and doctors are right to hesitate, to make sure these women understand all their options, and don’t have illusions that the effect can be reversed (either surgically, or de facto via IVF) at a later point.

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