Google searches for female sterilization, tubes tied surgery, fallopian tube removal, tubal ligation and salpingectomy have all shot up in the U.S. over the last week post-obit news that Roe v. Wade may be overturned.

Women in the U.S. take had a legal correct to abortion since the landmark determination past the Supreme Court in 1973. However, on Monday Politico said information technology had obtained an initial draft bulk opinion that indicates the decision will be overturned. The Pol report, which could not be independently verified by Newsweek, sent shockwaves beyond the country.

States have been preparing for the potential overturn of Roe v. Wade for many years. During his presidency, Donald Trump appointed a number of conservative judges to the Supreme Court, meaning the residuum was shifted towards a conservative majority. This raised the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned—which could make abortion illegal in over one-half of the U.S.

roe v. wade supreme court
MoveOn and Ballgame Access activists rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Tuesday. Online searches for female sterilization methods have dramatically increased. Getty Images

Severe restrictions on ballgame access are already in law in ix states: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, S Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming. The states with the greatest admission to abortion, signed into state law are California, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon and Washington.

The potential for Roe five. Wade to be overturned appears to have triggered people to look for alternative ways to prevent pregnancy.

Since the Politico written report was released, searches for terms relating to female sterilization take increased significantly. Searches for salpingectomy, where a woman'southward fallopian tubes are removed surgically, on May three were more than double what they were a week earlier.

The figures for searches for tubal ligation, where the fallopian tubes are blocked or cut, were similar, and those for female sterilization most quadrupled.

search data for female sterilization
Google search data from May four for female sterilization, tubes tied surgery and salpingectomy over the final 7 days. Google

U.s.a. where female sterilization was searched most were Montana, Rhode Island, Due south Dakota, Oregon and Kentuky. For tubal ligation, searches were most prominent in West Virginia, Northward Dakota, Kentucky, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Salpingectomy searches were highest in Vermont, Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota and Due south Dakota.

Google users also appeared to be searching for whether tubal ligation was reversible. The surgical process is considered a permanent form of birth command and while it can exist reversed with some other operation, betwixt 20 and 50 per centum of women are non able to get pregnant again.

tubal ligation
Top, Google searches for tubal ligation in the U.S. over the final seven days, as of May 4. Lesser, the map shows the frequency of searches for tubal ligation by state. Google

Cynthia Soohoo, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Human being Rights and Gender Justice Clinic at the City of New York School of Police force, said there may be an increment in the number of women getting sterilized or using long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) to avoid pregnancy.

"People rightly are concerned about their ability to access an abortion if they need one," she told Newsweek. "People want and demand to exist able to control their own fertility.

"Many people in the U.Southward. are only beginning to attempt to understand what it volition mean non to have access to an ballgame if they need one, a correct that we have taken for granted."

Soohoo said people should have the option for sterilization if this is the best option for them merely no ane should ever be forced to have an irreversible procedure over fears of an unwanted pregnancy.

Marge Berer, Coordinator of the International Entrada for Women'due south Right to Safe Abortion, said it is too early to tell whether in that location will exist a shift in contraceptive methods used in the U.Due south. towards LARCs over the coming years. "What is unlikely is that those who may want another child(ren) will seek sterilization in much larger numbers when LARCs are easily obtained and reversible—remove them—or they will at least be very reluctant," she told Newsweek.

Berer said she believes some of the searches into sterilization are the effect of scaremongering stories, and that Roe v. Wade being overturned is in no manner prepare in rock.

"I am not prepared to start making doomsday predictions of whatsoever kind right now, and I call back those who are doing so are playing into the hands of the anti-abortion movement past making women who feel powerless panic, instead of organizing them," she said.

Soohoo, even so, is less convinced.

"The leaked decision is just nearly the worst decision you could imagine," she said. "In reaching the determination that in that location is no constitutional right to abortion, Justice Alito essentially places the freedom rights of pregnant people on par with the state's interest in fetal life, asserting that states can make the decision about how to weigh the importance of one versus the other."

Berer said the leak of the draft document has been hugely of import as it shows a legal process that people demand to understand. "Everyone at chance of pregnancy—girls, women, trans—needs to know their lives are at take chances—their lives not simply access to abortion—and this must be fabricated known beyond the nation," she said.

"We need to demand our rights for as long as necessary and as loudly as possible until these misogynistic attempts to criminalize women considering they can become significant and to attempt to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term and have unwanted children, who will suffer too both earlier and afterward they are born, continue. Our lives and our futures depend on it."