While it is a routine operation—nearly 500,000 are performed in the United States every year—the myths about vasectomies fester.

You will lose

your sex drive. Your genitals will swell. You will suffer excruciating pain.

You won’t be able to get an erection or ejaculate. You won’t be a man anymore.

While it is a routine

operation—nearly 500,000 are performed in the United States every year—the

myths about vasectomies fester.

In fact, the

outpatient procedure is a simple form of birth control for men, intended to be

permanent, in which the health care provider closes or blocks the tubes that

carry sperm. This prevents sperm from leaving the body or causing pregnancy; the

body instead absorbs it. Used as birth control, vasectomies are nearly 100

percent effective.

Of course,

vasectomies are not for everyone. Particularly, they must be weighed against a

person or couple’s desire to have children in the future —considering such dire

circumstances that may intervene in one’s life, such as death or divorce. While

vasectomies can sometimes be reversed, the procedure is intended to be

permanent; reversals do not always work. Doctors warn against depending upon it

for any future change of heart.

Sex. Abortion. Parenthood. Power. The latest news, delivered straight to your inbox. SUBSCRIBE

Jason, a

38-year-old man from Turlock, California who had a vasectomy and asked that his

last name not be used, said that vasectomies seem to be shrouded in mystery for

most men.

“They don’t

understand that it is virtually painless,” Jason said. “It is extremely safe. Also,

most men are extremely protective and shy about male organs, outside of being

in a sexual situation. To think that some doctor will be cutting them open and

doing stuff turns off a lot of men to the idea.”

Julius,

a 49-year-old from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, noticed a similar sort of

thinking.

“Men

always seem to cringe when vasectomies are discussed, like it would really hurt,”

Julius said. “I was in so little pain that I did have intercourse the evening

of the procedure, and there was no pain involved. I had the procedure on a

Friday, and was easily back to my desk job on Monday.”

Still,

the mystery about vasectomies persists—and it is most prevalent outside the

United States. About 43 million men around the world have undergone voluntary

sterilization—compared to 180 women who have chosen sterilization, despite the

fact that vasectomies are far simpler, safer, and more affordable than tubal

litigation. A vasectomy costs anywhere from $350 to $1,000; female

sterilization costs nearly six times as much. (Medicaid covers sterilization

for both men and women.)

“Vasectomy is

extremely rare in all but a few industrialized countries and China,” according

to “In Their Own Right,” a 2003 report from the Guttmacher Institute on the

reproductive and sexual health of men. It further reports that most men in their

forties and early fifties do not want more children. Vasectomies are most prevalent in

North America, parts of Western Europe, and China; it is nearly nonexistent in

much of Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

And yet, cued by

a tight economic outlook around the world, many people are considering

permanent birth control. Besides wanting to prevent against unexpected

pregnancies, men in precarious jobs often want to have the procedure while they

still have health insurance that covers it.

Doctors have

seen a sharp increase in the number of people inquiring about the procedure,

according to U.S. News and World Report.

An article from last March cites Dr. Marc Goldstein of Cornell Institute for

Reproductive Medicine in New York City, who estimates that he has provided

about 48 percent more vasectomy consultations than he had one year ago. CNN

reports that the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio has seen a 50 percent jump in the

number of vasectomies that it is performing since the nadir of the recession in

Fall 2008.

There is, then,

an opportunity to dispel the myth and mystery around vasectomies as couples and

individuals begin to ask questions they might not have asked before.

While

vasectomies are becoming more common, the procedure comes in context of a

complicated history. Sterilization has been abusively applied to non-voluntary

individuals, particularly people of color. While women have been the primary

targets of this abuse, men too have suffered coerced vasectomies.

In India in the

1970s, reports of compulsory sterilization at “vasectomy camps” began to gain

notoriety around the world. Men were coerced with substantial monetary and

other incentives for having a vasectomy as part of India’s attempt to lower its

national birth rate. Government officials participated in many vasectomy camps,

lending it a troubling authority, according to the comprehensive book The Global Family Planning Revolution.

Indeed, to “persuade” men to have a vasectomy, one state withdrew public

rations for families with more than three children; another state legally

required sterilization after three children. In still another state, married

teachers with children had to be sterilized or they would lose a month’s pay.

The traumatic

legacy of this, paired with fears that the procedure inhibits virility, has

caused the unpopularity of vasectomies in that nation. A Times of India report in 2004 indicates that of the 34,000 men who

come to Delhi hospitals and clinics for advice about contraception, only 2,000

of them choose vasectomies.

Alongside the

lingering suspicion of sterilization as a tool of abuse, vasectomies also emerge

in context of the relative dearth of male birth control options. Historically,

the burden of family planning has fallen on women.

Matt Johnson

wrote in AlterNet about how his

decision to have a vasectomy was in part influenced by a desire to take responsibility

for his contraception:





All

the other common birth control methods (besides condoms and vasectomy) have one

aspect in common: They place the onus on women. Not only does our society

expect women to deal with the logistics of birth control, but these methods

also have severe physiological drawbacks, from roller-coaster hormonal changes

to intensifying menstruation cycles to weight and skin changes. Although these

methods have come a long way in a few decades, they still burden women and

their bodies. Is it any coincidence that in a male-dominated society, the

medical establishment has thus far focused on birth control methods that leave

the burden solely on women?

Having decided that I want to take an active role in birth control, a vasectomy

is fair, easy, and it confronts my privilege on this issue.

This socially conscious approach to

vasectomies also takes an environmental turn. Thomjon Borges of Somerset,

Massachusetts, said that he has “No regrets whatsoever” about having a

vasectomy. He added that, “the chance to contribute to slowing the population

growth was a plus.”





