Cutting the Lifeline

An increasing number of men in the prime of life are approaching doctors with nervous requests for "that operation." They want to be sterilized by a vasectomy or vasoligation--cutting and tying off the sperm-carrying tube (vas deferens) on each side in the scrotum.

Before World War II, this operation for sterilization was rare indeed, except under state auspices for sterilization of the insane. It has now become much commoner. There has been no detectable increase in New England or the Southeast, but some big cities of the middle Atlantic seaboard report a moderate increase. In some smaller Midwestern cities and the border states, vasectomy has become a fad, with doctors themselves setting the trend and joking about having been "clipped." In one prairie city of 250,000, two urologists who share an office do an annual average of 50 vasectomies apiece. Around Los Angeles the increase has been marked but moderate.

Five out of six of the men who ask to have the operation are married and explain either that they want no more children or that it would be dangerous for their wives to have more. They have heard that the operation for the man is simpler, quicker and cheaper than the corresponding one for a woman (tying off the fallopian tubes).

Some family doctors do the operation in their own offices, other general practitioners send the patient to a urologist or general surgeon. With a local anesthetic, it takes about 20 minutes (and costs from $25 to $100). It does not change the man's sexual functioning in any way, except that the normally sperm-carrying fluid is free of sperm. Because the legal status of such operations is clouded in grave doubt, the doctor usually demands a statement, signed by both husband and wife, that they know what they are doing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.