What Doctors Don't Tell You About Tubal Ligation and Post Tubal Ligation Syndrome (PTLS)

By Susan Bucher

This book explains what post tubal ligation syndrome (PTLS) is, and exposes that women have not been properly informed about the risks of tubal ligation. A must read for all women considering a tubal ligation, who had a tubal ligation, and their loved ones. All forms of birth control disclose the risks and benefits of each, expect for "sterilization". In the case of tubal ligation, negative information is withheld. These side effects of tubal ligation are known as "Post Tubal Ligation Syndrome". Susan Bucher , a victim herself of having information withheld from her, campaigns for informed consent. This text outlines the symptoms of PTLS, how women are diagnosed, hormone testing, "The Magic Cure to PTLS", and proposed actions that women can take to advocate for their health and rights. Includes information about who the Coalition for Post Tubal Ligation Women is, letters that the author and the Coalition have received, proposed informed consent law, and asks the question, "Do Doctors Steal Eggs?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257135264

Book preview

tuned…

Do not confuse birth control with population control.

Birth control is what women and couples practice on their own.

Population controls are policies set in place by governments. - sjb

Introduction

By, Susan J Bucher

This book is a collection of articles and information about tubal ligation. It contains information about side effects of tubal ligation known as post tubal ligation syndrome (PTLS or PTS), information about the history and politics eugenics, birth control, tubal ligation, and population control.

While some women reading this book will turn directly to the sections outlining the causes and symptoms of post tubal syndrome and its treatment and cures, it’s important for women to understand how we came to this point in history where women and the public are not informed of the possible side effects of tubal ligation. We also must consider what can be done so that history does not repeat itself.

It is my hope that this book will not only help educate women and men about PTLS but to also move people to act to cause change. Providing a copy of this book to your doctor or to your state representative may cause them to change how they inform and treat their female patients or to understand that an informed consent law is urgently needed.

Birth Control and Population Control:

Since the beginning of time women and men have sought effective methods of birth control. Birth control is what women and couples practice on their own such as women taking the pill or men using a condom to control their family size, to plan the timing of a pregnancy, or to avoid pregnancy. Do not confuse birth control with population control. Population controls are policies set in place by governments to control the size or growth of a community. Population control programs and policies that stem directly from eugenics.

An introduction to eugenics and population control:

The full history of eugenics and population control policies past and present would be a whole book in its self. Because the endpoint of eugenics is population control that includes tubal ligation (sterilization), it is important to understand the history of eugenics in order to gain a better understanding of why today we are not informed about the risks of tubal ligation.

Eugenics was born and began about the same time and in parallel to Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and survival of the fittest. Eugenics is a term which was coined condoning a reduction in the general population of those who were considered undesirable and a not an asset to society. Right away one sees the ethical and moral questions to this. How would this be done? Who will have the ultimate say as to who is worthy of procreating and who is not? These questions mattered little to eugenics advocates of that time who saw the control of populations necessary to better our human race to be the ultimate answer to future social problems.

Eugenic advocates sought to implement a plan not to kill but to sterilize undesirable segments of the population and restrict them from further procreating so that over time segments of our population would be reduced or eliminated. Grant provided an outline of this in his book, The Passing of the Great Race (1916):

A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit -- in other words social failures -- would allow us to solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.

At the turn of the century the science of eugenics became very popular and the eugenics movement was embraced by rich upper class Americans who feared the cost of a welfare state would tax our society to the point that our whole economic system would implode. Private eugenics societies were formed, governmental eugenics record offices were put in place and advocates lobbied for laws that would give governing bodies at the state level the power to petition and order sterilizations.

Pennsylvania in 1905 was the first state to introduce compulsory sterilization legislation. Indiana became the first state to pass a law permitting involuntary sterilizations on eugenic grounds. By the late 20’s, more than 30 states had involuntary sterilization laws. The targets of these laws included those who were homeless, orphans, blind, deaf, epileptic, in jail, those who scored poorly on IQ tests, and those who were diagnosed as being feebleminded.

Not only was eugenics a social movement but it was also a science related to education reform. Books about eugenics for teachers and the public were widely distributed. Eugenics became a common feature in college curricula and nearly 90% of high school biology textbooks used through the 1940s had sections on eugenics. Eugenic advocates also played a role in the creation of the first standardized IQ tests. Schools became both the place where students learned basic eugenic principles and where they were tracked for possible eugenic