In case you missed it, ACOG’s guidelines on reproductive sterilization were updated last year
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Feminist bioethics is, of course, about more than reproductive ethics. But it is also about reproductive bioethics.  One of the big issues with reproductive bioethics from a feminist perspective is the tension between who is dissuaded from or prevented from accessing sterilization or other forms of contraception, and who is encouraged to use or coerced into accepting sterilization or other forms of contraception.  IJFAB Blog contributor Alison Reiheld has addressed this in the past with respect to some European countries’ policies of mandatory sterilization for transgender people seeking a legal change of gender, and contributor Anna Gotlib has considered coercive sterilization practices in modern US prisons more than once.

In case you missed it, the revisions in April of 2017 to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s (ACOG) guidance on sterilization procedures for women addressed this tension between preventing some people from getting sterilized and targeting others for sterilization.

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ABSTRACT: Sterilization is the most common method of contraception among married couples, with nearly twice as many couples choosing female partner sterilization over male sterilization. Although sterilization is among the most straightforward surgical procedures an obstetrician–gynecologist performs, it is enormously complex when considered from a historical, sociological, or ethical perspective. Sterilization practices have embodied a problematic tension, in which some women who desired fertility were sterilized without their knowledge or consent, and other women who wanted sterilization to limit their family size lacked access to it. An ethical approach to the provision of sterilization must, therefore, promote access for women who wish to use sterilization as a method of contraception, but at the same time safeguard against coercive or otherwise unjust uses. This Committee Opinion reviews ethical issues related to the sterilization of women and outlines an approach to providing permanent sterilization within a reproductive justice framework that recognizes that all women have a right to pursue and to prevent pregnancy.

For more on this topic elsewhere on the internet, check out the superb documentary No Mas Bebes on the sterilization of latinas without proper informed consent, this 2017 article on the difficulty of accessing sterilization in Canada for young women who do not ever want to become pregnant, and this 2012 article on the same issue in the US. One need only Google “forced sterilization international” to see a raft of articles on the how the issue manifests in Brazil, with the Roma in Europe, and with disabled and HIV+ women around the world.

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