Gratuitous picture of a pretty girl in a wedding dress. Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]The Big Snip. Vasectomy, that is. This is a contraceptive procedure performed on men, wherein the connections to the male testes are severed, by cutting a tube called the vas deferens; thus, vas-ectomy. The result is that though the man can continue to enjoy sex normally, he’s shooting blanks, as it were, since his seminal fluid, which is mainly produced in the prostate, contrary to popular opinion, contains no sperm and is therefore incapable of fertilising an ovum.
This procedure has become very popular in many countries, where it is offered as a normal form of contraception. Many men are persuaded that this is the right course of action to take for a number of reasons. But in fact, vasectomy is something that no man should ever, under any circumstances, consider doing, and I will explain why.
Although the operation can be reversed, success is not certain in every case, and the success rate diminishes with the time elapsed since the procedure was carried out and the age of the man. Furthermore, in some countries, the UK for example, the vasectomy itself is paid for by the state, but repairs are not, and the man must pay. In essence, this means that a man may be permanently surrendering his ability to make children, since even if he can afford to have the operation reversed, there is no guarantee of success.
To be fair, this is made known during the pre-op counselling, but despite that, an increasing number of men are having the procedure. Why?
Unfortunately, the level of counselling provided to men before the operation is ridiculously low and biased towards having it, in cases where the man already has two or more children. You’ll be lucky if you get five minutes with your regular doctor before he or she signs the request, and there is no question of any psychological counselling.
In addition to this, many men feel that it is unfair of them to ask their partners to undertake contraception all the time. The contraceptive pill, which is the most common method, contains oestrogen, which is implicated in several types of cancer, including breast cancer. At the same time, many men, and I am one, dislike using condoms. So vasectomy seems to kill many birds with one stone, and rather than investigating the many alternatives to either the pill or condoms, men plunge ahead and have the snip.
The problem is that no-one can tell the future. You are in a stable relationship now, but what of five years in the future, or ten? Will you still be? You love your partner and she loves you; but will she still in a few years? Will she still even be alive? What happens if she has a fatal accident or suffers, unfortunately, a terminal illness? The man will be alone again.
Now he is really in a very difficult position. Suppose he meets another woman and the partnership goes well. Making children is a central part of a sexual union between a man and a woman. There is no substitute for the bond that parenthood can provide. So even if the man finds a partner who already has children, the likelihood is that she will want—as will the man—to have at least one with him.
What of women who have no children? It is shameful for a man to prevent a woman bearing her children, and in fact I would say to any woman whose male partner, willfully and for no proper medical reason, does so, that she should walk out the door and not look back, right away. Even if it as a result of a vasectomy that cannot be successfully reversed, this is a dreadful position to put someone you love in; it’s a dilemma no woman should be asked to confront—either the man she loves or her children. It is completely unreasonable.
Now there are methods that provide a possible solution in cases where a vasectomy reversal fails. One is to have sperm removed directly from the man’s testes and used to artificially inseminate the woman. It is hard to imagine a more extreme medicalisation of what should be a natural process, and even then it is certainly not a guaranteed success.
In addition to which, the costs are extremely high and many countries, again, refuse to pay for such treatments, meaning that not only will you have to spend a large amount to reverse an elective surgery, if it doesn’t work, you will be in a world of nightmarishly expensive medical bills.
Any man considering a vasectomy MUST reflect on this:
Vasectomy can cost a fortune, entail a great deal of pain and thoroughly invasive and unpleasant medical procedures, and prevent you from ever having a full and loving relationship with any woman other than the one you’re with now.
And that nice doctor, who is ‘counselling’ you prior to this decisive step, will not tell you one word of that.
Put simply, vasectomy is as utterly stupid an idea as I can think of. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about doing it. And under no circumstances—ever—allow yourself to be persuaded to do it.
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