Article Text
Abstract
An increasing number of bioethicists are raising concerns that young childless women requesting sterilisation as means of birth control are facing unfair obstacles. It is argued that these obstacles are inconsistent, paternalistic, that they reflect pronatalist bias and that men seem to face fewer obstacles. It is commonly recommended that physicians should change their approach to this type of patient. In contrast, I argue that physicians’ reluctance to eagerly follow an unusual request is understandable and that whatever obstacles result from this reluctance serve as a useful filter for women who are not seriously committed to their expressed requests for sterilisation. As women already disproportionally bear the birth control burden, less resistance that men might be getting in terms of voluntary sterilisation works to women’s advantage, providing a much needed balance. Societal attitudes towards women and motherhood should not be confused with individual physicians’ reasonable reluctance to jump at a serious elective procedure at fairly mild expression of interest.
- clinical ethics
- decision-making
- sterilisation
- women
- paternalism
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors The article is entirely based on the work of ZB.
Funding This study was funded by Ministarstvo Prosvete, Nauke i Tehnološkog Razvoja (Grant: 47010).
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Voluntary sterilisation and access to IVF in Québec
- The role of anticipated decision regret and the patient's best interest in sterilisation and medically assisted reproduction
- Who should provide the uterus? The ethics of live donor recruitment for uterus transplantation
- Autonomy, age and sterilisation requests
- Family planning in Brazil: why not tubal sterilisation during childbirth?
- Assisted reproductive technologies and equity of access issues
- Peer-to-peer counselling and emotional guidance on infertility in Britain and Belgium (1970s–1980s)
- Investigation and management of subfertility
- Asthma in Swedish children conceived by in vitro fertilisation
- Rising trend of childlessness in China: analysis of social and regional disparities with 2010 and 2020 census data