SPECIAL ISSUE: Sexual and Reproductive Health of Women with DisabilityResearch paperFemale sterilization is more common among women with physical and/or sensory disabilities than women without disabilities in the United States
Section snippets
Study population: the National Survey of Family Growth, 2011–2013
We conducted a secondary analysis of data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), a survey of a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized, civilian women and men aged 15–44.11 The NSFG sampling strategy includes oversampling for minorities and teens and adjustment for non-response.11 A complete description of the NSFG survey and methods are available elsewhere.11 We used data from the 2011–2013 cycle of the NSFG, which for the first time, included self-reported,
U.S. women who have physical and/or sensory disability, by sterilization status (Fig. 1)
Among the total sample of 4966 women, 461 (9.3%) reported at least one physical and/or sensory disability. Among disabled women, 130 (28.2%) had undergone sterilization, representing 1.2 million women nationally.
Selected characteristics among women with and without disabilities (Table 1)
More women aged 35–44 reported disability than women aged 15–24 [prevalence ratio (PR) 1.66, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.35–2.04]. Hispanic women, black women, and women of lower socioeconomic status, as reflected by education and insurance, were also more likely to report
Discussion
From 2011 to 2013, nearly one-third of U.S. women with physical/sensory disabilities, representing 1.2 million women, used female sterilization as a primary contraceptive method. Even after adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, education, insurance, marital status, parity and self-reported health, the odds of sterilization were higher for women with disabilities.
There are several possible explanations for this observed difference. Women with disabilities reported fair or poor health more often and
Disclosures
No financial disclosures were reported by the authors of this paper.
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2022, Sexual and Reproductive HealthcareCitation Excerpt :A significant association was not found between having a disability and female sterilization versus another modern method. This is in contradiction to a nationally representative study conducted in the United States, which found that WWD had higher odds of sterilization versus any other form of contraception [29]. However, in this study WWD living in urban areas had higher odds of female sterilization, which does align with the findings of the US study.