Meet the People Who Won’t Have Sex Until They’re Sterilized
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos GettyWhen Sasha was in college, she did what a lot of young women her age do: she Googled which birth control would work for her. But after some research, the answer seemed to be: none of them. Almost every method had drawbacks: increased risk of...
“Yep, you fucking heard it,” Sadie(@sadieanneliza), a 26-year-old Uber driver from Denver who uses they/them pronouns, said in the video. Their voice slurred—they admitted to being “fucking zooted” off of pain medication—as they talked about the sterilization procedure they’d had earlier in the day.
But when it came to her own feelings, Sasha “dreaded almost every other aspect of being a parent.” She didn’t want to experience pregnancy, the trauma of childbirth, the financial burden of raising a little one. And she worried how being a parent would “directly inhibit [her] ability to achieve other goals in life.”
All the drama made Sasha wonder if she even wanted to have children at all. “I realized that the things I had been looking forward to about having kids were almost exclusively limited to the idea of seeing a future significant other being happy to become a father,” she said.
Sasha spent time volunteering with children to see if she’d change her mind. It only solidified her feelings. “I didn’t dislike the kids, [but] I just wasn’t comfortable there,” she said. “I realized that parenting a young kid would just not be for me.”
She began researching permanent contraception in the form of a sterilization procedure. Sasha made the decision to not have sex until she could afford the surgery. To this day, she hasn’t been able to get one. So Sasha, who is now 25 and lives in Minneapolis, hasn’t had sex since her sophomore year of college.
When Sasha began her first sexual relationship, she ended up taking hormonal birth control pills, but always used condoms as backup.
“I feel as though I’ve had to put part of my life on hold,” Sasha said. “Even if I were to meet someone today who was perfect for me and I wanted to be in a serious relationship with them, I would have to wait until we could move forward with that part of our relationship.”
Part of the problem, Sasha and others say, is how difficult it can be for young women and non-binary people to convince doctors they will not “regret” opting into a procedure that leaves them unable to have children for the rest of their lives. Women in the United States must be 21 to have their sterilizations covered by Medicaid or the Indian Health Service. Those with private insurance do not have that age restriction.
One study cited by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reported that around 20 percent of women who get the procedure before they are 30 feel “regretful” afterwards. That risk of regret drops down to 6 percent for women who are sterilized after age 30.
Still, ACOG lists sterilization as the most common form of contraception for married couples, with 18.6 percent of American women aged 15-49 getting permanent contraception.
To find encouragement, Sasha has trolled the r/Childfree subreddit, where users provide support to like-minded internet friends who also don’t want to become parents. The subreddit has a pinned Google Doc where users can share the names and contact information for doctors who have helped them get the procedure and spoke to them in a respectful, judgement-free manner.
Sasha recently saw a health-care provider for a different issue and mentioned that she was planning on having her tubes tied. To her “surprise,” the doctor was very supportive “right from the get-go.” Though this specific practitioner is not a surgeon, she plans to refer Sasha to the right doctor for the procedure.
“She suggested that I write a letter about why I don’t want children and why I want the procedure, as this may help convince doctors who may be concerned about performing permanent sterilization on a person my age,” Sasha said. “She also warned me of a doctor who requires his patients to see a psychologist and have them sign off on the procedure before he will agree to perform it. I suspect that doctor does not require his patients to have a psychologist sign off on their decision to have children, which arguably has a far greater impact on someone’s life than not having them. This policy sends the horrible message that the decision to not have children is most likely the result of a mental illness.”
Buzz Aldrin (LMP)
Charlie Duke (CAPCOM)
Neil Armstrong (CDR)
