Thomas Figueroa, a 27-year-old Floridian, decided to get a vasectomy after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. He and his girlfriend don’t want children and this is his way of taking equal responsibility for reproduction now that the ban on abortion makes it harder and riskier for her to get an abortion should she get pregnant. The male vasectomy is an outpatient procedure and takes only about 10 minutes. Recovery from the procedure is short, it takes about two days, as opposed to a female tubal ligation, which is riskier, much more invasive and takes a longer recovery. Indeed, “Every single year in this country alone, 25 to 30 women die from getting their tubes tied,” said Marc Goldstein, a Weill Cornell Medicine urologist.
Thomas is not alone, in fact, he now has plenty of company. Dr. Doug Stein—known as the Vasectomy King–a Florida urologist, said that generally, about 12% of his patients inquire about the vasectomy in his practice, and they are usually men who are child-free. There is another 12% of men who are under the age of 30, he adds. “But the number of both, young and child-free, has nearly doubled”. The two-doctor practice performs ana astounding six vasectomies an hour on most days. Requests for the procedure at Stein’s practice have nearly tripled to about 150 a week.
Dr. Alex Shteynshlyuger, director of urology at New York Urology Specialists, said his Manhattan practice has been deluged with vasectomy requests since a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked in early May.
What has led to Thomas’ determination to undergo the procedure? “I feel for a lot of men, especially for myself, that this is a way where they’re trying to protect their girlfriends or try and protect their partners. They’re trying protect their future partners,” he said. Normally, most men who get a vasectomy do so after they’re done having children or if they don’t want any at all. Now however, for the first time urologists are seeing an increase in interest from men as young as 23 in the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
There are a number of reasons for such a surge in interest among childless men under the age of 30: one, like Thomas Figueroa, is that they are outraged that women have lost such a fundamental right over their bodily autonomy and their fertility. Another is to show support by taking some responsibility for contraception; and the last is because they’re afraid of the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy now that the woman may lack access to abortion. This last one is clearly founded on self-interest: they’re afraid that if they cause a pregnancy and the woman is unable to get an abortion, that failure will be life changing not only for her, but for him as well.
Thomas Figueroa and his girlfriend do not want children, so getting a vasectomy was always on his mind. “I’ve always thought about this decision. The Supreme Court did push me to finally do it,” he told CBS News.
The surge is not limited to any geographical area, although there is more reason for an uptick in the states where the trigger laws banning abortion have already kicked in. Bloomberg reports that a Cleveland, Ohio clinic went from about 25 to 90 sterilizations per week after the US Supreme Court decision. Connor Speed, a man of 23, expressed frustration and sees it as a distinctly political gesture. “Unfortunately, my fiancée and my daughter now don’t have the right to choose what they want to do with their body, and I do, so I made this choice.”
Web traffic on a Planned Parenthood web page explaining how to receive a sterilization procedure increased over 2,200% in the days following the judgment. Traffic to an article on how to get a vasectomy spiked more than 1,500%.
The challenges that we are facing as a society today are also a noteworthy factor: public sentiment and consumer confidence are at their lowest ebb in many years as we struggle against political division, Covid and its aftermath, and fears of an impending economic recession. It is worth noting that the last time that a similar trend in vasectomies happened was during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when procedures spiked while reversals dropped.
Especially among liberals, the hints that conservative Justices such as Clarence Thomas have dropped about future decisions that the Supreme Court may be making in the near future have triggered fear that they may either ban contraception or make it a lot more difficult to access. Couples who have chosen sterilization feel confident that if that should happen, it will not affect them.
Figueroa took the Roe v. Wade decision personally: “This is probably one of the very, very rare things in politics that actually does affect me very personally and very hard,” he said. “It really woke my eyes up.”
