Thomas Figueroa always knew he did not want children. Growing up in Central Florida, he remembers that his classmates got pregnant since high school and thought about having a vasectomy in recent years. But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade on Friday, hurried to schedule one. He signed up Monday for a vasectomy with Doug Stein, a Florida urologist known as the “King of Vasectomy,” to defend the procedure. “It’s something I put in the back of my mind until very recently, when the Supreme Court ruled,” said Figueroa, 27, who lives in Tampa. “It simply came to our notice then. It pushed my mind to say, “Okay, I really do not want children. I will do this vasectomy now “. ” Figueroa is not alone. Urologists told the Washington Post they saw an increase in requests for the procedure in response to the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Stein said that before Friday, they received four or five applications for vasectomy a day. Since the court ruling was announced, that number has skyrocketed to 12 to 18 requests a day. “It was a very, very memorable Friday, and then the number that came over the weekend was huge and the number that is coming still far exceeds what we experienced in the past,” Stein told The Post. “Many of the guys say they’ve been thinking about a vasectomy for a long time, and Roe vs. Wade “The decision was exactly the final factor that put them aside and made them apply online.” Some doctors experience confusion and fear in a post-Roe world. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has teamed up with many other professional organizations and medical journals in recent days to warn that the decision will affect health care beyond abortions, posing new risks to patients and possibly increasing maternity. Doctors are concerned about the impact on conditions such as miscarriage and in vitro fertilization. The practice of medicine will be reshaped, the group said, or even opposed to “laws that are not based on science or evidence.” Doctors face confusion and fear in the post-Roe world Vasectomy is a form of permanent sterilization that prevents sperm from flowing through the seminal vesicle and combining with the sperm. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that in 2002, the main reasons women provided for vasectomy-based reasons as a form of birth control were that they or their partners already had all the children they wanted. But from 2011 to 2015, other reasons to rely on vasectomies, including medical reasons and problems with other types of birth control, became more common. There was a push for pending vasectomies Roe Anti-abortion legislation is overturned and enacted in states across the country. Stein and other vasectomy advocates have taken to the streets and child support offices to encourage people to have the procedure. Men all over America have vasectomy “as an act of love” Stein said his office was closed until the end of August with a vasectomy appointment, prompting him to open more days in his schedule to accommodate newly registered patients. He and his colleague John Carrington said the decision was overturned Roe has immediately taken into account their patients’ requests for vasectomy. Men under the age of 30 who do not have children are requesting more vascular resections than before, doctors said. “I would say at least 60 or 70 percent refer to the Supreme Court ruling,” Curington said. “And some of them have such sophistication as young men who actually think of Judge Thomas and his opinion that contraception can follow. And that is shocking. “This is something that never enters our discussions until this week.” Amanda Omelian, 33, and her boyfriend Eric Nisi also knew they did not want children. Nisi, 29, had been considering a vasectomy in recent years, but said it was the Supreme Court ruling that prompted him to take the next step. Omelian, who hails from Homosassa, Florida, and is already in two forms of birth control, worries that Florida will soon restrict access to these contraceptives in addition to restricting abortion rights by banning abortions for 15 weeks. recently voted. That led Nisi to sign up for a vasectomy on Tuesday. The sharp increase reported by Stein’s practice is consistent with what other urologists say they have seen from his plan. Dobbs The opinion was leaked last month. Philip Wertmann, a urologist from Los Angeles, also reported a “300 to 400 percent” increase in the number of vasectomy visits he has made. Esgar Guarín, a Iowa-trained urologist who specializes in vasectomy, said he has seen a “200 to 250 percent” increase in traffic to his site, which provides information specifically on vasectomy. Marc Goldstein, a urologist and director of the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, said he usually sees twice as many patients a week for reversal vasectomy as vasectomy. “Now it is the other way around,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. That too [decision] will further affect this in terms of increasing demands “. This is not the first time that a major news event has caused a rise in vasectomy. Goldstein said requests for vasectomy increased after the Great Recession of 2008, as more men began to worry about raising extra children while under financial pressure. When the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, there was also an increase in demands with more men working from home, Guarin said. “When that happens on the news, we get a kick out of it,” Guarin said, adding that he has seen a steady increase in vasectomy requests each year. “The overall upward trend continues, but the dramatic increases do not.” The Affordable Care Act does not require all insurance companies to cover the discount on vasectomies, unlike contraceptives, which are covered as “preventive services”. Nisi, who is between jobs and has no health insurance, said he pays out of pocket for the procedure, which costs just under $ 600 at Stein and Curington’s clinic. Figueroa, an IT professional, said he also decided to pay out of pocket despite having health insurance from his employer. “This does not bother me at all,” he said, adding that the ease of the process motivated him to do so. “Birth control for a woman does not really have to be necessary for something, in my opinion, that is so cheap and very fast.” Urologists attribute the general increase in vasectomies to the development of male posture. Werthman noted that the recent increase in requests for vasectomy in California occurred despite the fact that the right to abortion in the state is likely to remain unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling. “If there is one state in the country that is not going to allow the abolition of abortion rights, I think it would be California,” he said. Werthman, who performed vasectomies for two decades at Planned Parenthood, said he believed there had been a “change in men’s souls” and that they were more concerned about their role in family planning than before. Nisi said he did not want his girlfriend Omelian to be “anxious to get pregnant” because of a possible lack of access to birth control in the future. “The world is a scary place and you do not know what is coming, because it looks like we are going backwards.” Figueroa echoed the sentiment, saying that what unfolded in the days from last week served as the last push he needed to sign up for the long-considered vasectomy. “This is probably one of the very, very rare things in politics that really affects me very personally and very hard,” he said. “It really woke my eyes.” Ariana Eunjung Cha contributed to this report.
