Source: Stateline
Months after the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade, rates of people seeking sterilizations dramatically increased, new research reveals.
According to the study published in JAMA, a journal from the American Medical Association, researchers saw a 3% increase in tubal sterilizations, commonly known as getting “tubes tied,” per month between July and December 2022 in states with abortion bans.
“It’s probably an indication of women [who] wanted to reduce uncertainty and protect themselves,” stated Xiao Xu, the lead author and associate professor of reproductive sciences at Columbia University.
In the same study, researchers also found that vasectomies increased over three times during that same time.
“We saw a pretty substantial increase in both tubal ligation and vasectomy procedures in response to Dobbs,” Jackie Ellison, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, told NPR.
Since the Dobbs decision, researchers are only beginning to understand the impact of little to no reproductive health care access for millions across the country.
According to The Guardian, experts have found that abortion bans increase the rates of babies born with severe genetic abnormalities and worsen maternal mortality rates, particularly among Black women and especially in southern states, like North Carolina, which have the worst rates in the U.S.
In addition, women forced to carry a pregnancy to term experienced financial hardship, health and delivery complications, and were more likely to raise the child alone, according to the landmark Turnaway Study.
“We have found that women are able to foresee the consequences of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term,” Diana Greene Foster, a professor and research director in reproductive health at the University of California, told Stateline. “The reasons people give for choosing an abortion — insufficient resources, poor relationships, the need to care for existing children — are the same negative outcomes we see when they cannot get an abortion.”
Foster added, “So it is not surprising that some people will respond to the lack of legal abortion by trying to avoid a pregnancy altogether.”
