A historic decision… And dramatic.
This Friday, June 24, the Supreme Court of the United States revoked the Roe vs. Wade judgment which, since 1973, had protected the right to abortion at the federal level.
Since then, the voices of millions of women have risen around the world to support American women and defend a fundamental right.
This awareness also affects men and some of them have chosen to make their contribution by choosing vasectomy.
On Wednesday, June 29, American urologists told the
Washington Post
that they had seen a spike in requests for this contraceptive procedure aimed at cutting and diverting the vas deferens carrying sperm.
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Explosion of consultation requests
In his office in Los Angeles, the urologist Philipe Werthman was surprised by an unprecedented crowd.
In recent weeks, he has seen a 300 to 400% increase in the number of consultations for vasectomy.
At the other end of America, Dr. Doug Stein, or "the king of vasectomy" as his colleagues call him, confirms.
If formerly he received 4 to 5 requests for procedures per day, now the average oscillates between 12 to 18.
"The number that continues to arrive far exceeds what we've seen in the past," Doug Stein told The
Washington Post
.
A lot of guys say they've been thinking about getting a vasectomy for a while, and the Roe vs. Wade decision was just the final factor that tipped them off and pushed them to submit their entry online.”
A fellow urologist from Iowa, Esgar Guarín, also says that he came close to crashing his website and observed an increase of between 200 to 250% in traffic.
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"The world is a scary place"
Who are these men who take the plunge?
Doctors are seeing greater demand from 30-somethings without children.
Among them, Thomas Figueroa, 27, who lives in Tampa (Florida).
“It's something that I had put on the back burner until very recently, when the Supreme Court's decision came, he recalls in the columns of the
Washington Post
.
It was a trigger.
It made my mind say, “Okay, I really don't want kids.
I'm going to do this vasectomy now."
Not far from there, in Homosassa, Eric Nisi, 29, also felt the need to put words into action.
The 30-something doesn't want his girlfriend Omelian to 'stress about getting pregnant' over potential restricted access to birth control in the future.
"The world is a scary place and you don't know what will happen, because it seems to me that we are going backwards today," he told the American media.
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A milkshake for a vasectomy?
This is not the first time that a major event has caused an increase in the number of vasectomies.
According to Marc Goldstein, urologist and director of the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, requests for this permanent contraception peaked after the great recession of 2008. As the specialist points out, more and more more men questioned expanding their families because they were under financial stress.
When the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020, there was also an increase in requests from men who work from home, adds Dr. Esgar Guarín from Iowa.
To encourage those who do not or no longer wish to have children and to play down the act, there is no shortage of solutions.
In Tennessee, where a federal court voted last week in favor of banning abortion from six weeks of pregnancy, a very popular hot dog restaurant, Daddy's Dogs, opposes it and proposes on the contrary, to shake the carrot with these gentlemen with a gourmet offer.
The idea?
Men who bring proof of their vasectomy to the counter will receive a free milkshake in exchange,
The Tennessee Star
reported Friday, July 1.
"There's nothing like an ice cream milkshake after a vasectomy," said store manager Sean Porter in a video posted on Instagram.
With irony, he points to a client in the process of relieving his pain and delicately placing the offered drink near his private parts.
The short film ends with an invitation to visit a center specialized in this kind of procedure to benefit from more information but also... to reserve their delicious beverage.