Hospital’s Religious Ethics Committee Cancels Woman’s Sterilization Procedire

We’ve all heard stories of women who seek out sterilization procedures only to be told no because they’re too young and may change their minds, or that the surgeon would perform it, but only if their husband signed off. Well, it’s still happening.

A Tennessee woman experienced this in real life when, while waiting in pre-op with an IV in her arm, nurses informed her that her salpingectomy (Fallopian tube removal) had been cancelled. The reason: the hospital’s religious ethics committee felt it had a “duty to protect her sacred fertility,” and a Tennessee law passed last year allows for such decisions to be made.

According to Nashville’s WSMV4, the woman, who wishes to be anonymous, was informed her scheduled procedure would not move forward while already in the pre-operative area waiting for it to begin. She spoke with the doctors who would perform her procedure that day, had her IV placed, and then waited three hours before the news was delivered by a group of nurses.

“The hospital wasn’t going to allow them to go through with it because they had concerns about the implications of sterilizing a woman so young,” she told WSMV. She was told the decision was handed down by the hospital’s Catholic Ethics Oversight Committee, which cited a “duty to protect her sacred fertility.”

This woman never wanted children and knew she wanted a sterilization procedure from the moment she first heard about them, she said. She had tried many forms of birth control over the years but told WSMV that none of them worked for her.

She is also a sexual assault survivor, which contributed to her decision to have the surgery because of Tennessee’s strict abortion ban. There, abortions are prohibited at all stages of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. Just this week, Republican lawmakers in Tennessee proposed an amendment to their abortion bill that would allow the state to charge women who have abortions with homicide, carrying sentences as serious as life in prison or death.

In April 2025, the state of Tennessee passed House Bill 1044, also known as the Medical Ethics Defense Act. That law protects doctors and healthcare institutions from legal blowback if they decline to perform procedures that conflict with their religious beliefs — allowing a scheduled salpingectomy like this one to be cancelled, even though the patient’s care team was on board.

“Our Catholic identity and healing Mission call us to care for everyone with dignity and respect,” says Ascension Healthcare’s website. Ascension St. Thomas Midtown is one of the largest hospitals in middle Tennessee, pointing to the fact that women may have to travel to find new physicians and nonreligious hospitals should they choose to pursue a salpingectomy.

The health system operates 14 hospitals in nine different states, some of which — like Texas and Florida — have similar medical ethics laws in place that allow hospitals to decline procedures they disagree with.

Scary Mommy reached out to Ascension for comment but did not receive a reply before press time.