LA Veterinarian Says Spay-Neuter Mandate Causes Harm Without Results

A Los Angeles veterinarian who performs spay and neuter surgeries nearly every day is calling on the city to abandon its mandatory sterilization ordinance, arguing the roughly 20-year-old rule punishes owners who cannot access care rather than owners who refuse it.

Bridgid Twomey, a licensed veterinarian and assistant professor in Los Angeles, laid out her case in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece. She wrote that she considers spaying and neutering critical tools for reducing pet overpopulation and euthanasia, but that limited evidence supports the mandates delivering their intended results.

"I recognize this sounds like a contradiction: I perform spay/neuter surgeries nearly every day, yet I oppose a blanket mandate requiring these procedures."

What is failing in the system?

Twomey anchored her argument in numbers. The city's weekly allotment of 725 online spay-neuter vouchers runs out almost immediately after release, she wrote. The vouchers are released on Sundays, when libraries offering internet access are closed, making them effectively unattainable for people with limited or no internet access.

Participation has collapsed. According to publicly reported city data Twomey cited, the number of clinics participating in the voucher program has fallen by roughly two-thirds, from 85 in 2015 to 29 today. Even voucher holders must arrange transportation and find a participating veterinarian.

The city has simultaneously cut funding for L.A. Animal Services, she wrote, leaving frontline staff with fewer resources.

How does the mandate affect owners and shelters?

When an intact animal enters a shelter, the mandate can delay its return home by requiring fees and sterilization before release, Twomey wrote. This adds to overcrowded kennels and creates obstacles for owners trying to reunite with pets.

The city also issues street-level citations, or "fix-it tickets," to owners of unsterilized animals. For vulnerable communities, these penalties create fear and distrust and make people less likely to seek veterinary care, she wrote. Twomey provides veterinary care alongside SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, a volunteer-led organization supporting people experiencing housing insecurity.

"Ticketing them is pointless at best, and more likely alienating."

She added that most people she works with want their animals spayed or neutered. "The problem isn't a lack of willingness. It's a lack of access."

Her concern is shared by many major animal welfare organizations, she noted.

What happened at North Central Animal Shelter?

Twomey described an assault last month at North Central Animal Shelter. A man smashed through the clinic door while she was in surgery, attacked her team in the surgery prep area, seriously injured a co-worker, and hit Twomey hard enough that she could not return to surgery for five weeks. Staff and trainees protected animals on the surgery tables and barricaded the door. The attack ended when the assailant walked his dog out of the building.

The man had come to the shelter more than 24 hours earlier to recover his dog. Under city rules, an impounded animal's owner may be required to pay fees and wait for sterilization before release. For a desperate owner, these requirements can turn a routine surgery day into an assault, she wrote. When clinic staff become targets of violence, recruiting and retaining shelter staff becomes harder.

What changes does the veterinarian propose?

Twomey called on Los Angeles to stop treating the inability to access care as a failure of its citizens. Her recommendations include:

• Expanding access to free and low-cost spay/neuter services and increasing the number of vouchers
• Making participation financially viable for more clinics
• Bringing services directly to communities facing transportation and cost barriers
• Immediately limiting street-level enforcement and creating a reasonable opt-out clause
• Longer term, replacing the blanket mandate with a system prioritizing accessible, affordable care over punishment, which would free animal control officers for welfare and cruelty cases

She credited the city's recent commitment to monthly spay/neuter clinics on Skid Row as a welcome step, but said clinics need to be much more frequent to have real impact. State Assembly Bill 2010 takes effect next year and will help increase access by removing some regulatory red tape, she wrote, but these efforts remain insufficient to fix a system that penalizes people who cannot access care.

Twomey closed with a plain goal: keep animals safe and healthy, not create more reasons to separate them from the people who love them. The debate over whether Los Angeles replaces its mandate with an access-first model will shape how shelters, clinics and vulnerable owners interact for years to come.