"You're hysterical. You're overreacting. You're attention-seeking. You're mutilating yourself for an absurd reason."

I am seeing language like this much more often on subreddits like r/ModeratePolitics - even though such language is anything but "moderate" - and r/conservative, particularly in response to women, as well as AFABs, getting sterilized in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States; widespread bans on abortion by conservative states; and fear of a national abortion ban. I've especially seen more of this language after the re-election of Donald Trump - a conservative Republican who has openly bragged about "appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade" - as the 47th U.S. President.

Furthermore, when Michigan Rep. Laurie Pohutsky recently announced that she had undergone tubal ligation due to the election of Trump, she immediately started to receive threats of violence and death. Quote:

The Detroit News reviewed one voicemail message to [Pohustky's] office, in which a caller identified himself as a "constituent down here in Wayne County" and said Pohutsky was "sick" and "mentally f****** ill". The caller said Pohutsky and other "sick f****" would be taken out of the government. "You godless people are going to get eliminated. Just wanted to let you know. You're on notice," the caller added.

[...] State Rep. Brad Paquette (R-Niles) said of Pohutsky, quote, "She very well knows that President Trump cannot take away her ability to abort her unborn baby here in Michigan...[she] destroyed her reproductive system for political gain." [Ben Shapiro, a prominent conservative commenter, called people who seek sterilization "broken".]

[...] "I don't know what this woman is doing other than just encouraging young women to render themselves infertile," said Rebecca Kiessling, a Michigan-based 'pro-life' advocate, Roman Catholic, and family law attorney. "I think that this [Trump] administration is going to be supportive of not just women's health, but everyone's health. Everyone is going to benefit, and will have health and longevity, not just for ourselves, but also for our children."

[Kiessling is recorded as having previously opposed sterilization in court documents on "religious grounds", while also claiming that all sterilizations "violate the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution...as it 'deprives...[a] person of life, liberty, or property'", an argument previously used against involuntary sterilizations.]

As an AFAB person and an ex-Catholic who identifies as nonbinary, it makes me so angry, upset, and frustrated to see what I assume are men - who, by virtue of being biological men, cannot experience what women and biological females go through with this - making comments like this. It feels like the United States, as a society, is suddenly regressing to before 1980, when "hysteria" was finally removed as a mental health disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

It also feels as though men are becoming more patriarchal, as opposed to less, as time goes on. For example, "you're mutilating yourself for an absurd reason" - referring to women and AFABs opting for voluntary sterilization and tubal ligation out of fear of pregnancy - reinforces decades and centuries' worth of sexism and misogyny by "paternalistic" male physicians in the medical field.

This gets even scarier when you consider that, while on the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump insisted that he would "protect women, whether the women like it or not". It becomes quickly apparent that quite a few conservative and Republican men have interpreted that as "I will protect women from themselves, as well as the dangers of abortion, birth control, and sterilization". To further illustrate this, Trump signed an executive order titled "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation" on 28 January 2025.

In fact, Trump's executive order is the top search result when you Google "sterilization mutilation". The only other relevant result, in reference to adult women, I could find was a letter from Vincent McNabb, O.P. (8 July 1868 – 17 June 1943), who was an Irish Catholic scholar and Dominican priest based in London, titled "The Ethics of Sterilization", and "based on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas".

"You will notice that St. Thomas does not once mention the word 'sterilization', but the word 'mutilation'," McNabb wrote. "The reason for his silence is that there is a wide difference between the two words. St. Thomas takes 'mutilation' to mean the 'the removal of a member of the human body'. Sterilization is the 'removal of a procreative member or element of the human in order to prevent procreation'. St. Thomas wrote the article in order to prove what some denied, that it was lawful to save life by cutting off a limb. The very first objection is directed against those- Christian scientists before our day! - who argued that all mutilation or, as we should say, all amputation was against nature, and therefore, against morality."

"But it is quite clear that, though amputation is not in itself morally evil, amputation done under certain circumstances, and especially under the circumstance of aim or purpose, may be morally evil," McNabb added. "There is not one argument [from the Catholic Church or St. Thomas Aquinas] in favour of sterilization as sterilization, i.e. as the deliberate mutilation of a procreative organ for the purpose of preventing procreation."

Another source that shows up on Google, too, is the University of Navarra, a private Catholic university located in Spain: "Although the internship of voluntary sterilization, that is, sterilization performed without medical indication, and by the sole decision of the person requesting it, has been decriminalized, it is still a serious mutilation, which depreciates the biological quality and staff of the person who undergoes it. Consequently, voluntary sterilization must be considered a condemnable act from an ethical point of view, and its performance must be discouraged by all physicians, regardless of the modality of their professional internship."

Why, then, are conservatives and Republicans - especially on Reddit - increasingly allowing Catholic Church influence and teachings in such discussions? Is it because of the influence of Catholic hospital networks and healthcare systems? Or is it because traditionalist Catholic views align with the fascist, paternalistic, and "pro-natalist" rhetoric that is increasingly gaining ground among U.S. conservatives?

In any case, I originally opted for an IUD - something also condemned as "morally evil" by the Catholic Church - but seeing comments like these makes me even more inclined to get an elective tubal ligation.