More women are getting their tubes tied after ruling nullifies constitutional right to abortion in US

More women decided to undergo tubal ligation after the Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned in 2022 by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a new study, with the largest increases seen in states that ban abortion.

A study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA reviewed 2021 and 2022 insurance claims data for about 4.8 million women who underwent tubal ligations, a procedure in which the fallopian tubes are cut and tied so that the patient can no longer become pregnant. The data came from 36 states and Washington, D.C., and researchers categorized these locations as “prohibited,” “limited” or “protected” based on their abortion policies.

In the 18 months leading up to the June 2022 decision, tubal ligations remained stable in all three groups of states. But in the second half of 2022, the procedure increased in all three groups. The researchers also looked at a sustained change in the numbers over time, finding that tubal ligations rose 3% per month in states with abortion bans.

“It’s not completely surprising” given the changes to abortion laws, said Xiao Xu, senior author of the paper and an adjunct professor of reproductive sciences at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

The research adds to other findings about the rise in sterilization procedures after the Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned, including a study published in April in JAMA Health Forum that found a sharp increase in tubal ligations among women ages 18 to 30 and vasectomies among men in that age group.

“It appears that the data they used allowed us to break things down by state, which is nice and something we weren’t able to do with the data we used,” said Jacqueline Ellison, an author of the April study who is at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

Dr. Clayton Alfonso recalled seeing an increase in tubal ligations in his gynecology practice at Duke University in North Carolina, “especially around the Supreme Court ruling.”

Patients who did not want more children — or any at all — were worried that contraceptives would not work and they would get pregnant unexpectedly, said Alfonso, who was not involved in any study. Patients told her they preferred to be sterilized if they could not abort.

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