Twenty-seven percent of currently married Brazilian women aged 15-44 are protected against pregnancy by sterilization. Female sterilization has averted 0.7 births per woman and reduced the total fertility rate (TFR) by 16 percent. Sterilization rates for the first half of the 1980s indicate that 58 percent of Brazilian women will be sterilized by age 40, with a potential demographic impact of 1.06 births averted per woman and a 24 percent decline in the TFR. Women with high fertility early in their reproductive career and moderate completed parity are the most likely to be sterilized. Among married fecund women who want to terminate childbearing, 30-34-years-olds, urban women, those of the highest social classes and women who have delivered 3-5 children are those most likely to be sterilized. Of the married fecund women who gave birth in the five years prior to the survey and who want no more children, four-fifths of those whose last child was delivered by cesarean section had been sterilized, compared with one-fifth of those who delivered vaginally. The women most likely to be sterilized had delivered in a private hospital and had the delivery expenses paid for by Social Security supplemented with personal payment.