(Photo by Peter Foley for Reuters)
These women are getting elective surgical procedures to render themselves infertile — all because Donald Trump won the election.
The women, who are speaking proudly about their decision, say it’s because they fear a reproductive rights crackdown under a second Trump administration.
Newsweek recently spoke to multiple women who said they were turning to invasive, irreversible medical procedures to ensure their reproductive freedom remains untrodden upon.
“If I am to be denied any rights in the next four (or more) years, I will not give them up without a fight,” said Lydia Echols, 28, a Texas woman making plans for a bilateral salpingectomy — a procedure in which her fallopian tubes will be removed.
An unidentified 39-year-old who had just gotten the procedure told the outlet that she felt she had no choice after the election results.
“I am not happy that I felt forced into a surgery I did not want to alter my body, I feel like the election tied my hands and forced me to be sterilized — that is horrible.”
Another woman — who said she and her husband both never wanted children — described her decision using language straight out of a dystopian novel and TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in which women are second-class citizens.
“I paid way too much attention to the vitriol Trump repeatedly spit during his previous term … and am keenly aware of the people he keeps around him and in his ear, who all seem to see women as incubators and possessions to subjugate,” she told the outlet.
She had preemptively scheduled her appointment to be sterilized in October, claiming she was “fully planning to cancel the surgery the day after the election, assuming Kamala won.”
In describing her choice, to Newsweek, the woman used language that suggested the elective surgery was forced upon her.
“With Trump’s victory, we quickly learned that my choice to cancel the surgery had been taken from me,” she said. “This isn’t a wanted procedure, but one of necessity due to the politics and subjugation coming our way.”
On a post on the “childfree” subreddit about the Newsweek article, women were lauding their decision to get sterilized as young as 21 years old — some throwing around extreme claims now rooted in reality.
“Well when you pass laws that murder women on a regular basis, what are you going to do?” one Reddit user wrote without elaboration.
“I want to get sterilized so bad but I don’t have the money and I don’t want this procedure to come up in my parents’ insurance,” lamented another.
Other women are coping with Trump’s dominant election win with a good old-fashioned sex strike.
Across TikTok and X there’s been a surge of videos of women aligning themselves with a South Korean feminist protest movement known as “4B,” in which participants eschew the “four nos” — having sex with men, giving birth, dating men or getting married to men.
Others have even taken to shaving their heads in an attempt at signaling some sort of vague anti-patriarchal sentiment, or encouraging their viewers to dump their Trump-supporting husbands or boyfriends.
The movement has been widely mocked online, with some — including women — questioning participants’ sincerity, their sanity or calling their behavior attention-seeking “cringe.”
“Perfect. Evolutionary dead ends cutting their own branches off,” one X user snidely remarked.
“Sounds like they need lobotomies instead,” quipped another.
“Nothing says defeat like eliminating yourself from the gene pool,” another poster wrote.
Trump has sent mixed signals about his support for abortion rights — at times boasting about his role in getting Roe v. Wade overturned — but he’s also repeatedly vowed he would not support a federal abortion ban, even threatening to veto one should it come across his desk.
“I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!)” Trump wrote on Truth Social in October.
Soon-to-be first lady Melania Trump also famously made her staunch support of abortion rights known in a clip posted on social media to promote her memoir, “Melania.”
“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” said Melania, 54. “Without a doubt there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth,” she continued.
