The horrible misinformation in this topic is astounding.
1. Most doctors don't go down without a fight if either a man or a woman wants to be sterilized. It's outdated way of thinking and it's increasingly hard the younger you are. Not one doctor would allow me to do it prior to having a medical termination for a genetic condition I passed on. I started asking at about 24 years old. I finally had it done at 32.
2. The risk of sterilization is pretty much the same for a man or woman. Even the procedure for a woman is a quick laparoscopic procedure. I spent a few hours at the outpatient surgery center before going home. I was sedated for the procedure.
3. The reversal procedure is in the thousands for a man or woman and still has a very small success rate. A woman, however, can have her eggs retrieved through IVF and implanted after fertilized. The only downside is it's more expensive than a reversal.
4. Ectopic pregnancies can happen. But it doesn't have to be a life threatening, scary, or deadly thing. Most woman don't expect to become pregnant, so they don't always pay attention to their cycles. Ectopic pregnancies can happen with or without a tubal ligation, and the end result the same with or without a tubal.
5. Most women have been on some form of birth control since early teenage years to deal with PMS symptoms and in their 20's to ward off pregnancies. There's a large number of women that do not know their normal cycle because they've never experienced a normal cycle for any longer than a couple of months to get pregnant. When they finally have a tubal ligation and go off birth control, issues can come up that they didn't know existed because it was warded off by birth control.
6. Abortions have much less risk than either sterilization procedure. Even giving birth has a ten fold risk than abortion complications. And an abortion does not effect the ability to become pregnant again.
Yes doctors should listen to the patient when one requests to be sterilized if they're certain, but it's not a decision to made lightly for a man or woman. Neither should an abortion, but most women do not regret obtaining an abortion if it's what she chooses and not coerced into it by some one else.
Limited access to abortions has not limited unwanted pregnancies. It has only limited the choice of the woman to make the decision she wants for herself. Most these states limiting access to abortion also limit access to long term birth control methods. The only thing proven to limit abortions is when there is adequate access to contraceptive methods.
Texas limited clinics, making some clinics over 200 miles away for a woman to get to. The state has only seen a rise in unwanted births of low income women.
Colorado received a large private donation to increase access to long term birth control like IUD's. More women sought after the IUD's, and fewer women sought after abortions because there were fewer unwanted pregnancies.
But overall, we need to go all the way back to the books in school and rewrite sex ed classes without all these religious nutters.
birth in Jan, vasectomy in December while it was still free. 
