I Had My Fallopian Tubes Removed To End My Marriage. My Then-Husband's Reaction Shocked Me.

. Courtesy of Carly Rae Brunault

In the summer of 2020, while the virus raged and my marriage folded in and collapsed in slow motion upon itself, I decided that I would become infertile.

My husband sat next to me in the waiting room before I was wheeled away, surprisingly good-natured about it all, even taking a selfie of us for posterity.

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I was relieved. He was my high school sweetheart and a fervent Catholic who had insisted I convert before we were married right out of college. He had been vocally against me using any form of birth control for years, but I didn’t question his sudden ambivalence.

My first gynecologist, also a Catholic, was recommended to me by my mother-in-law, who worked at the same hospital. Like my husband, he also rebuked my desire to prevent pregnancy. One year into my marriage, I asked him for an IUD. The next, an implant. After each request, he demurred: “You’re healthy, and doing so well with natural family planning,” he said in rebuffing me, referring to the method I’d been using to prevent pregnancy.

It was a complicated process riddled with uncertainty. Each morning, I took my temperature and charted it next to my other observations; a sharp uptick in temperature meant I was nearing my follicular phase, and the risk of pregnancy was high. To verify that evidence, I would use my fingers to explore the texture, position, and fluids emanating from my cervix, to predict whether ovulation was imminent enough for my husband and I to need to abstain from sex. This divination worked for about two years — and then I missed a period.

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In 2018, I miscarried in our bathroom. The cramps roared through me in a way they never had before, and I passed thick, brown blood and membranous tissue into the toilet.

“It’s just a period, though, right?” My husband had asked — almost begged. “If you’re miscarrying, then we need to collect it and bury the baby.