Like It Is

That’s if you’re seeking sterilization as a means of contraception.

It appears that if an otherwise healthy woman requests sterilization, and it isn’t deemed to be medically necessary there are a range of complex and ethical decisions the consultant feels they need to make.

But when a woman has always known she does not want children, this also presumably means that she also does not want to become pregnant either. She has probably arrived at the decision to request sterilization after many years of thought and consideration – it isn’t the kind of decision you wake up one day and think of just “doing.”

If these women get as far as seeing a consultant, it’s usually after a couple of refusals, so they are probably doubly determined. So why are their requests dismissed by consultants as a temporary whim, while, once again, the woman has to justify why she wants to be sterilized?

The view of many consultants is often that:

• They feel they have a responsibility to check that they (the woman) has thought it through. Why should they not have thought it through?
• They are afraid that the woman will do something she will regret… but isn’t that the doctor’s personal bias and judgment?
• They feel they have to do a little counseling of the women…. (seemingly to try and counsel them out of it)
• Since they know the woman is likely to keep trying, they see no harm done in not giving immediate approval for sterilization

This attitude makes me steam. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was aware there were obstacles to childfree women obtaining sterilization, simply from happening across posts from women who have had difficulty trying to find a doctor who would either refer or do the procedure. There is still a huge lack of research and readily available unbiased literature in this area, the best book I have found is Annily Campbell’s Childfree and Sterilized, which is very good, however even her study was limited to women in the UK. But it is still a shock to know that this is what women should be prepared for should they be seeking sterilization.

Now, if a 31 year old woman went to her doctor and said she wanted to get pregnant, would the doctor say “now are you sure you know what you are doing? Have you thought it through? Are you 100% sure you won’t regret it?”

Not a chance. Breeding simply isn’t questioned.

No, even if the woman was 40 and wanted to conceive – or have more children, regardless of the risks of her doing so, it’s unlikely she’d be discouraged by doctors, quite the opposite.

I wonder if these consultants, and referring doctors who feel childfree women are somehow incapable of knowing their own minds, are aware of how humiliated and dismissed these women feel in the face of a refusal of their request and application for sterilization. How some feel reduced to a kind of infant in the face of often patronising attitudes from doctors who decide they need to be gate-keepers and decision-makers for the woman, even though it’s her body. Where is the concern for her welfare?

Worse, how, they are actually leaving some women with little option but to struggle with less than satisfactory contraception, endless pregnancy scares and even abortion, until such a time when, only because she’s determined, the woman’s repeated requests are finally granted and her application is successful.

Women may be able to vote, but they still have to jump through hoops if they want to control whether they have children or not. And by the way medical opinion doesn’t appear to be gender-based on this particular issue. Female professionals can refuse to refer a woman for sterilization just as much as male doctors.

Ladies and gentlemen we’ve a very long way to go still.

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