They refused to tie her tubes, because she hadn’t tied the knot.
A 24-year-old mom has set Reddit alight after claiming her doctor refused to sterilize her because she wasn’t married.
The unnamed woman explained that she was a single mom who had gone through a “horrible pregnancy” that put her in the hospital six times.
“By the end I had to give birth to her early because she wasn’t gaining weight and I was losing weight,” lamented the mom of one.
To make matters worse, the Redditor had been forced to do everything alone as she hadn’t received “a cent from the baby’s father,” per the post.
While she claims her daughter is the “love of her life,” the woman said she never wants “to be pregnant again” after her experience.
Despite knowing of her ordeal, the doctor refused to perform a tubal ligation — surgical sterilization that seals the fallopian tubes so the egg can’t reach the uterus — on the grounds that she was too young, unmarried and only had one child.
Needless to say, the patient found the marriage rationale particularly “bizarre” as she felt it shouldn’t be up to another person to “sign off on my decision.”
“I also don’t really plan on ever getting married unless it benefits us more to be married,” she declared. “I explained to him that this isn’t be deciding that I never will have more children. If the situation arises where I do want another child, I will adopt.”
“Or if my partner wants a baby biologically we can look into surrogates,” she added. “If I can’t afford that, I can’t afford a child.”
The woman’s account prompted a torrent of young mothers to come forward with similar stories of doctors refusing to perform the procedure based on their relationship status.
“Unfortunately, the married one is super super SUPER common,” recalled one woman. “In order to get my tubes tied I had to be married and have at least 2 kids. I was also almost 30 at the time.”
“I’ve been asking for a tubal ligation since I was 19,” a second woman chimed in. “The first doctor laughed and said ‘What if you fall in love and HE wants a baby’ because apparently a mythical man I wasn’t even with has more rights to my body than I do.”
“I’m now 39 and waiting to be signed off by two gynecological consultants in December before I can be added to the waiting list,” she added.
A third respondent was also maddened by the woman’s story.
“Makes me laugh (not in a funny way) that at 24, you can drink, you can vote, start a business, go to war, drive a car, drive a truck, jump out of an airplane, but you can’t choose what to do with your body because you aren’t “mature” enough,” they wrote.
However, according to experts, these stories aren’t just anecdotal.
“If you’re in your 20s, your doctor may not take your request for a tubal ligation seriously,” Healthline writes. “Keep in mind that in most instances, they’re simply coming from a place of concern that you will regret your decision someday. Even so, you don’t have to accept their refusal to do the procedure as final.”
If a doctor does refuse this form of birth control, patients should remind them that the American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians (ACOG) guidelines state that “it is ethically permissible to do this procedure in young people,” the site advises.
ACOG guidelines state that “respect for a woman’s reproductive autonomy” should be their guiding principe.
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