(Washington) The United States has seen a dramatic increase in the number of sterilizations as a means of contraception since the constitutional guarantee of the right to abortion was struck down at the federal level two years ago, according to a study released Friday.
Since the Supreme Court of the United States, reshuffled by former President Donald Trump, overturned the constitutional protection of the right to abortion in 2022, around twenty American states have banned or severely restricted access to abortion. voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion).
The issue of abortion has since become a central theme of the presidential campaign which pits Republican Donald Trump against outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden.
The study published Friday highlights that the sterilization rate had certainly already increased in the years preceding this historic decision, with 2.8 procedures per 100,000 women per month and 1 per 100,000 men.
But the decision triggered a dramatic jump with 58 sterilization procedures per 100,000 women per month and 27 per 100,000 men, according to the study which focuses on 18-30 year olds.
After the initial shock of the reversal of jurisprudence, however, the number of vasectomies among men returned to previous trends, while the rate of tubal ligations among women continued to increase more rapidly than before the Supreme Court’s decision, note the researchers.
This notable difference “probably reflects the fact that young women bear much of the responsibility for preventing pregnancies,” said study lead author Jacqueline Ellison of the University of Pittsburgh.
“And they disproportionately suffer the health, social and economic consequences of abortion bans,” she added in a statement.
However, sterilization procedures are much more complex and two to six times more expensive for women than for men, the study authors point out in the press release.
Additionally, reversing a female sterilization requires complex and invasive surgery, which is much less the case for men.
Polls show that a majority of Americans support the right to abortion, which weakens the Republican Party a few months before the November election.