Building on getting pregnant when you don’t want to be - there’s also the feeling that as far as the government and every medical and health authority you will ever encounter in your life is concerned, your life as a unique human individual with your own needs and goals, will always be overshadowed by your own fertility. You are not a human being in their eyes, so much as a valuable incubator of other human beings.

If you need a drug or medical procedure, even if your life depends on it, even if your life depends on it right now because it’s an emergency and you’re bleeding out on the table, it will be judged against the effect it will have on your fertility. If that medicine or treatment stands a chance of hurting your future possibilities of bearing healthy children, then you stand a chance of being allowed to die while the ethics committee hems and haws over whether or not it’s morally acceptable to safe your life.

If you are pregnant, the life of the fetus or embryo - despite whatever gestational age it has reached - will have as much, if not more, value than your own.

Women are advised by national and international medical authorities to prepare their bodies for pregnancy before being asked if they intend to have children. The CDC says we should consider ourselves “pre-pregnant”, due to the large number of unplanned pregnancies in the US - apparently the fact that so many women are getting pregnant without planning or preparation is not an issue, as far as the world’s most powerful government’s public health authority is concerned.

When a man asks for a vasectomy, he faces little opposition. A woman can be well into her 40s, have a pre-existing medical condition that makes pregnancy deathly dangerous, ask multiple physicians multiple times, and even be sternly informed that she better not have any more children if she doesn’t want to risk her life, yet will still be denied a sterilization procedure. Presumably, it is a woman’s job to not get pregnant if it is harmful to her, not a doctor’s job to protect her health. Also, perhaps there is that assumption that even if it does kill her, the woman and/or her family may ultimately decide another pregnancy is worth it. Again: her ultimate purpose is to be an incubator. Should she die to give birth, it’s not a tragedy, it’s beautiful, even if she leaves other children behind.

When it comes to reproduction, a man can decide what he wants to do with his body. A doctor cannot tell him he knows better. But a woman doesn’t have that agency. She will be told that she doesn’t have the ability to make that decision, unless it is to be fertile.