Tubal Sterilization: Questioning the Decision

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
It is estimated that by 1985, more than 100 million couples worldwide had been sterilized for contraceptive reasons. Consistent with the increasing levels of contraceptive sterilization is the finding in numerous studies of generally high levels of satisfaction and low levels of regret about having undergone the procedure. However, the questions asked in these studies differ (regret v. reversal), so the validity of cross-national comparisons is problematic. In this paper these issues are considered by analysing responses concerning sterilization regret and the desire for reversal from recent fertility and family planning surveys in Panama, Puerto Rico, and the United States. While generally high levels of satisfaction with the decision to undergo sterilization are confirmed, they also show that variations between different surveys in the questions asked (regret v. desire for reversal) and the ambiguity presented by variations in permitted response categories (dichotomous v. polar + middle responses), make it impossible at this time accurately to compare levels of dissatisfaction with sterilization among the populations studied, or to identify adequately the important covariates associated with sterilization dissatisfaction. Better conceptualization about the nature of regret and its various aspects and the development of valid and reliable methods of measurement are clearly needed.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: