Sterilization, A Site of Gametic Governance

• In Event: Sociology of the Body and Embodiment Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Embodiment in Politics, Resistance, and Social Movements

Abstract

In this paper, I theorize sterilization as a form of gametic governance. Drawing on an analysis of state and federal Medicaid policies, clinical guidelines, and hospital and clinic routines, I examine how consent timing rules and organizational practices stratify who has access to sterilization and who is effectively denied it. I pose the questions: whose requests for sterilization are honored, delayed, or dismissed in post-Roe Texas, and how do Medicaid policy and surgical options govern access to sterilization differently across race, class, and insurance status? By centering gametes rather than pregnancy, the paper shows how organizations and the state jointly govern eggs, thereby perpetuating racialized, classed, and insurance-stratified inequalities in reproductive autonomy, and offers a mechanism-level account that can inform reforms to Medicaid consent rules and clinic-level sterilization protocols.

Author

• Neha Jangeti, University of North Texas