Are women opting for sterilization?

Over the weekend, among reports of the nomination of Kash Patel to direct the FBI and the pardon of Hunter Biden, came a report that looks suspiciously like a push poll. Newsweek alleged that significant numbers of women are opting for elective sterilization – because Donald Trump won reelection. But their evidence consists solely of interviews with five such women. They didn’t even conduct or quote a survey to find out how many women of childbearing age are choosing sterilization. So four questions raise themselves right away. First, are women of childbearing age opting for sterilization in significant numbers? Second, if so, is this a new trend, or have a similar proportion always chosen that route? Third, what does Newsweek or any similarly leftist publication hope to gain or see happen by publishing such a story. And last – and most important – what does this mean for American politics and society?

Newsweek and its five women

The Newsweek piece came out on the morning of November 30. They quoted one other piece suggesting Trump could “eliminate” abortion access without seeking an Act of Congress. Cassandra MacDonald of The Gateway Pundit profiled the piece that day, and Jimmy Parker at Page Traveler profiled it today.

Newsweek spoke to five women in various States which have different abortion laws, as this interactive map shows. Lydia Echols, 28, lives in Texas, which allows abortion only to prevent compromise of maternal health. She is planning the most common irreversible sterilization procedure: bilateral salpingectomy, also known as “tubal ligation.” In that procedure, the gynecologist does not merely tie the tubes; he cuts them across. In fact she has opted for more than that: endometrial ablation, in which the gynecologist scrapes away the womb lining.

Why is she opting for such a drastic procedure? She said she had “been wanting to be child-free for a very long time.” And furthermore:

The next four years will go in the way of the Christian nationalists if what I have seen and heard and experienced is to be believed. Anyone who has… taken a look at the social tirade Donald Trump encouraged and employed during his years in the office knows that this is the time to prepare and be prudent for what could yet come. I’d rather be safe than sorry.

And:

If I am to be denied any rights in the next four (or more) years, I will not give them up without a fight.

An anonymous woman from Washington State, where abortion is legal before fetal viability, has already had the tubal ligation. Apparently she scheduled this surgery in October, thinking to cancel it if Vice-President Kamala Harris won. Trump won, so she kept the appointment. Said she:

I am not happy that I felt forced into a surgery I did not want to alter my body, I feel like the election tied my hands and forced me to be sterilized—that is horrible.

Yet her husband underwent a vasectomy – cutting of the vasa deferentia, the conduits of sperm in a man – in 2021. Why, then, undergo a tubal ligation? Because:

With Trump’s victory, we quickly learned that my choice to cancel the surgery had been taken from me. We both believed that I had no choice but to proceed to ensure that I can protect my health should I be assaulted during a Trump presidency, should my husband’s vasectomy fail and/or should my hormonal birth control become inaccessible.

Neurotic!

This 39-year-old woman did say she suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome, which could make pregnancy itself risky. Furthermore, she said she and her husband each had a difficult childhood – far too difficult to contemplate becoming parents. So why didn’t she opt for a tubal ligation ahead of time? Because:

[N]either of us wanted to subject me to an unnecessary surgery or jeopardize my health.

Given the preconditions, that’s a lame excuse – because tubal ligation today is a laparoscopic procedure. The gynecologist uses an instrument called a laparoscope to “see inside the abdomen” without having to open it. He makes one incision for the laparoscope, and another for whatever instruments he will use. Makers of surgical devices introduced sophisticated laparoscopes and associated probes, scalpels, and other instruments, more than thirty years ago. Sometimes the gynecologist must convert a laparoscopic procedure to an open one, requiring general anesthesia. But such cases are rare.

All of which to say that this woman is already seriously neurotic to begin with. While some might call that an indication not to have children anyway, she could and should have sought counseling to work through those bad-childhood issues that plague her in ways she likely hasn’t considered.

Morgan Wood, 24 and resident of Georgia (a six-week-ban State), might have similar issues. She says she has “struggled with” “serious gynecological issues” since early adolescence. In fact she uses an intrauterine device and might be one of the last women who use such devices. Said she:

I have no idea what Trump will and won’t follow through on. I was already upset when Roe v Wade was overturned. Living in the South, our prospects for protections and resources aren’t great if they aren’t otherwise ensured. But talks of complicating the birth control and abortion access processes even further made this feel like the only option. I need everything handled, and ideally before power begins shifting.

Two more

Ashley Hedden, 36, lives in Kentucky, which makes abortion available for maternal health reasons only. For reasons Newsweek’s interviewer never explored, she does not feel sexual attraction to anyone – itself a neurotic attitude. The only way she could ever fall pregnant, she says, is following a criminal attack. Furthermore, she says:

I have seen that this country will not protect people that can get pregnant, and have seen the reports of the deaths of pregnant women that were refused medical care. I refuse to be a person that ends up not being able to get medical care just because I own a uterus with some cells growing in it.

The “reports” to which she refers, are of the deaths of women who somehow develop a notion that they would not be allowed to get a simple dilatation and curettage procedure after taking the mifepristone regimen (without a doctor’s supervision) and becoming septic. One such woman died in Atlanta, Georgia. She need never have worried. Even in Georgia, that constitutes an allowable maternal health exception. Whoever failed to inform her of that fact, might be accused of negligent homicide – but she would face no charges.

Newsweek’s last subject was Eden Ixora, 25, resident of Florida. Florida has a six-week ban, extending to fifteen weeks in cases of incest, sexual violation, or human trafficking. In the last election, Florida’s “Amendment Four,” which would have legalized abortion on demand, fell short of supermajority passage. After self-declared “Christian Nationalist” Nicholas J. Fuentes made a joke about how a woman’s body was “your body, my choice,” she opted for tubal ligation. (Someone, perhaps criminally, leaked Fuentes’ home address online in apparent retaliation.) Said she:

For me it was a call to action. A need to get this locked in so I don’t have to live in fear that at any moment some random guy can completely destroy my life. For me the idea of getting pregnant is worse than death. I’m doing what I can to protect my right to choose. I am choosing me.

Do these women also suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome?

None of them take any assurances from Trump’s statement that he would refuse to countenance a federal law banning abortion. Perhaps none of them saw Karoline Leavitt’s statement on the subject:

The American people heard from him today and what he said is this: That he supports the rights of states to decide on this issue. He wants the people to have the say. He wants it to be up to the will of the people. And that’s exactly what the Dobbs decision did. It returned this issue back to the states, back to those closest to us in our state legislatures.

That is, in fact, current law. But it clearly does not satisfy abortion activists. Not content with facilitating “abortion tourism,” they want the federal allowance of abortion back.

Perhaps, so does Newsweek. Correspondent Khaleda Rahman quoted Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, as outlining ways that Trump could ban abortion nationwide without consulting Congress. But of course Prof. Shaw exaggerates. She cites two possible mechanisms of “restricting abortion access”:

• Enforcement of the Comstock Act, which definitely would stop the sending of mifepristone kits though the mail, and
• Revoking the original approval of mifepristone by the FDA.

Prof. Shaw pronounced the Comstock Act unconstitutional. That only means she would volunteer to “brief” the Supreme Court to that effect. Like so many on the left, she either doesn’t understand or won’t admit to understanding how the Supreme Court works.

Aside from that, Newsweek’s subjects repeated the canards about Trump the country heard from the Biden and Harris campaigns.

What evidence did they present?

Anecdotal surveys – using interviews with a limited number of usually self-selected subjects – are never statistically dispositive. To show a trend on a shifting answer to a question, one must poll the question. That, Newsweek did not do. Instead they chose five of the most neurotic women they could find. While (arguably) two had physical issues of concern, all suffer from psychological issues that almost certainly cloud their judgment. These issues go back to their girlhoods. And because they never got the help they needed, they are carrying those attitudes into adulthood – and voting citizenship.

Does Trump have anything to do with this? Absolutely not. He wasn’t prominent in politics when Ashley Hedden developed her lack of sexual attraction. He had nothing to do with the unnamed woman who admitted to developing psychological issues as a little girl. And he definitely did not cause Eden Ixora to become the self-centered, already-bitter young woman she revealed herself to be. In any case, neurosis has been a recognizable – and treatable – problem for centuries.

So are significant numbers of American women as neurotic as are these subjects? Newsweek won’t say how many women they interviewed to find these five. or even where they found these five. So we cannot know.

If it is a trend, then it is most likely new. America’s Total Fertility Rate – the average number of children a woman has – has been falling. And it’s been falling for a long time, leading to the expression Baby Bust in the Seventies.

What does it mean for these women?

Newsweek is likely trying to stay relevant in a market that is passing them, and similar legacy media organs, by. Why else would they bother with some law professor who talks like a leftist political hack? That started it, and two and a half weeks later, they followed up with this five-subject anecdotal focus group.

Of course they are pushing an anti-natalist ideology, and want people to believe these attitudes are common. Their failure even to attempt to poll the question, clearly suggests these attitudes are not common – and Newsweek knows it.

Given the actual likelihoods, this study means only that Newsweek found five seriously neurotic women to paint a lurid picture of Male Tyranny. And that they shamelessly exploited their neuroses, and would not even want them to get the help they really need.

Of the five, one, or maybe two, have an indication for tubal ligation at this stage in their lives. The other three should never have such irreversible procedures without addressing their psychological issues. (Some gynecologists will attempt tubal recanalization upon request, but success is doubtful.) Years later, those three might get over their neuroses – and regret having an irreversible intervention in a fit of pique. And if anyone else is to blame, it is their doctors, who – in at least those three cases – are ignoring the psychological issues that should contraindicate the procedures – especially endometrial ablation – in order to collect Big Fat Fees.

What does it mean for the larger society?

As CNAV said before, the anti-natalist ideology is not a winning stance any longer. Abortion “rights” did not stop Donald Trump from resuming his residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So that’s not even a winning issue now, in the elections of the immediate future.

The more distant future is even bleaker for those who pretend to be caring for the “rights” of women. True enough, the population will continue to decline for a generation, or at most two. But most of the children born during that time, will be born into pro-natalist households. One can hope they can avoid the neuroses that plague the Newsweek Five – and which, again, are the sole indications for three of the sterilization regimens Newsweek profiled. In any case, an average TFR of 1.7 children per woman (source: The World Bank) does not mean that all women are as infertile as that statistic suggests. For every childless woman (whether she keeps cats or not), another woman might have two children, and a third, three. And this is key: childless women are disproportionately leftist; fertile women are disproportionately rightist.

CNAV repeats another thing it said before: the political left will go into demographic winter. Anecdotes like those Newsweek presented will become, not tales of heroism (heroinism?) but cautionary tales.