Requests for IUDs in Michigan have spiked since the election

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Following the election, doctors in Michigan say a large number of their patients are looking at new forms of birth control.

According to Melissa Bayne, an OBGYN in rural Michigan, it’s a rare day that has passed since the election without a patient asking about their options for birth control. Although many of the patients who call her office are now taking birth control of some kind, they are looking for new, longer-term choices that will be available during the second term of President Donald Trump.

Additionally, we’ve been receiving a lot of sterilizing requests, Bayne stated. In the three months following Dobbs, I processed more sterilization requests than I had in perhaps fifteen years.

With a decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in 2022, all three of the justices Trump nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court during his first term contributed to the overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion.Trump has been ambivalent about his position on abortion for years; at the moment, he supports access as a matter for state decision-making.

Since the election, hundreds more patients in Michigan have scheduled monthly appointments for long-acting birth control, such as IUDs, raising concerns about additional cuts to reproductive health care, according to Planned Parenthood of Michigan.

According to Planned Parenthood of Michigan, appointments for long-term reversible birth control, such as IUDs, at Planned Parenthood health facilities increased by 77% in the two weeks after Election Day as compared to the same period the previous year.

Additionally, Ashlea Phenicie, Chief Advocacy Officer for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, stated that there have been almost 40% more appointments each week since the election.

According to Phenicie, the election and the current political climate in the US were the main reasons why people chose to get long-term birth control. Some patients were worried that the Trump administration would restrict access to contraception or outlaw abortion nationwide.

According to Phenicie, the reason for the rise in appointment requests is that people are worried about the future of reproductive health care over the next four years. For many people, long-acting, reversible birth control is an excellent choice. Because of its low user error rate, IUDs and arm implants are among the most effective forms of birth control. Additionally, they are long-acting, which means they can last for several years and possibly even the second Trump administration.

On the day following the election, Planned Parenthood health facilities nationwide reported a 1,200% spike in scheduled vasectomy appointments and a 760% rise in scheduled IUD appointments.

Even in states like Michigan, where the right to an abortion and reproductive health care is guaranteed by the state constitution, Bayne, a member of the Committee to Protect Health Care Reproductive Freedom Task Force, said there is still a great deal of anxiety about unintended pregnancies or the inability to obtain life-saving pregnancy care.

According to Bayne, any modifications to Medicare or Medicaid would have a significant effect on the patients she treats, even in the absence of a federal abortion ban. According to Bayne, 70% of her patients in the rural Michigan region she serves are covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

According to Bayne, some patients are in a difficult situation because of the availability of reproductive health care, and she hopes that information rather than fear will influence medical decisions.

A 22-year-old woman without children who came to Bayne’s office and said, “I absolutely know that I don’t want children, and I absolutely don’t want to be in a situation where I absolutely don’t want to have failed contraception or not be able to access contraception,” is one instance that has caused her to pause. It’s a difficult art to balance respect for a patient’s decision with the understanding that regret for sterilization treatments diminishes with age.

Although multiple studies show that women’s regret for sterilization tends to decrease beyond the age of 30, Bayne points out that this regret percentage isn’t particularly high in the first place and that other operations, such as knee replacements, have greater regret rates.

Therefore, balancing that autonomy conversation with telling a patient, “I absolutely respect your autonomy and you’re an adult, and you can make this decision for yourself, and I don’t want you to make this decision out of fear,” Bayne stated.

When Michigan state representative Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia) revealed at a rally outside the state capitol that she had had surgery to permanently make herself infertile, what began as an effort to combat the stigma associated with sterilization became a national controversy.

Pohutsky told the crowd last week that she had no choice but to navigate pregnancy in Trump’s America. This statement drew harsh criticism from a number of conservative figures, including Ben Shapiro, who wrote on X, “So many broken people,” directed at Pohutsky, and has received one million views to date.

Death threats are being made against us, which was not at all what I had anticipated. According to Pohutsky, “I think it’s really, really strange that anyone feels personally about the decision I made in the end regarding my own body and my procreative future.” There have been highly divisive responses to it, and I believe that discussions on it will start to become more frequent. To sort of eliminate some stigma there was what I hoped for.

According to Pohutsky, the discussions surrounding her choice to rule out the chance of becoming pregnant were drawn out and difficult. Women frequently question themselves, so she was happy to learn that by sharing her story, others have contacted her to say that they have also gone through the procedure or that reading her story has helped them feel less alone when thinking about getting sterilized.

Trends in contraception have been influenced by politics and elections. Similar to what Bayne noted following Roe v. Wade, there was a spike in sterilization procedure requests nationwide in 2022. The use of long-term birth control rose by more than 20% in the weeks after Trump’s first election in 2016, when he ran on a platform of appointing pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In reaction to the 2016 presidential election, Pohutsky was one of the many people who received an IUD. Pohutsky revealed that she was already learning about sterilization as a potential option, regardless of how the 2024 election turned out, but Trump’s win made her want to schedule the treatment while it was still an option.

I believe that you may both be content with a choice you make and lament the end of a chapter. According to Pohutsky, when I went for the surgery, I made the decision to end that particular aspect of my life. In the end, I believe I would have had the procedure. Although we had kind of decided on that, there was a sense of urgency. I believe that the only reason it was necessary to do it now was the outcome of the election, and I find it annoying that someone has to base their choice on someone else’s body preferences.

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