(Washington) – The United States has seen a significant increase in the number of sterilizations as a method of contraception since the constitutional guarantee of the right to abortion was eliminated at the federal level two years ago, according to a study released Friday.
Since the US Supreme Court, reconstituted by former President Donald Trump, struck down constitutional protections for the right to abortion in 2022, about two dozen US states have banned or severely restricted access to abortion.
The abortion issue has since become a major topic of the presidential campaign that pits Republican Donald Trump against outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden.
The study published on Friday highlights that the sterilization rate had certainly actually risen in the years leading up to this historic decision, with 2.8 procedures per 100,000 women per month and 1 per 100,000 men.
But the decision brought about a big jump, as the number of sterilization operations reached 58 per 100,000 women per month and 27 per 100,000 men, according to the study, which focuses on people between the ages of 18 and 30 years.
However, after the initial shock of reversing the case law, the number of vasectomy procedures among men returned to previous trends, while the rate of tubal ligation among women continued to increase more rapidly than before the Supreme Court's decision, the researchers note.
This observed difference “most likely reflects the fact that young women bear much of the responsibility for preventing pregnancy,” said Jacqueline Ellison, the study's lead author from the University of Pittsburgh.
“They suffer disproportionately from the health, social and economic consequences of abortion bans,” she added in a statement.
However, sterilization procedures are more complex and two to six times more expensive for women than for men, the study authors noted in the press release.
In addition, reversing female sterilization requires complex and invasive surgery, which is much less common for men.
Opinion polls show that a majority of Americans support the right to abortion, which weakens the Republican Party a few months before the November elections.
