Lives will be lost regardless. We can’t sterilize every fertile woman who doesn’t want a child at this time.

For women who don’t want children, sterilization is a safe and common option. But following the leaked Supreme Court decision, it’s taken on a new sense of direness and urgency

Pseudonymous gas station clerk Eleanor is just 20, but she knows that she never wants children. “I have a lot of trauma from my childhood, and from how my mother treated me,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t want to risk continuing that cycle of abuse.” So, for the last few years, she’s been researching sterilization procedures, specifically a salpingectomy — an operation in which one or both of the fallopian tubes are removed. But it wasn’t until earlier this week, when a leaked draft revealed that the Supreme Court had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade — the landmark 1973 ruling that made safe, legal abortion a constitutional right — that Eleanor finally decided to try and book an appointment with a gynecologist.

“I’m terrified of having to go through pregnancy,” she explains. “If women aren’t already sterile or don’t get sterilized as soon as possible, lives are going to be lost.”

CONCERNED ABOUT ROE, THESE WOMEN ARE TURNING TO STERILIZATION (MelMagazine, which seems to be yelling at us, which is fair considering the context.)