A vasectomy is a procedure that stops a man from having children. When my father got his vasectomy, I was a child and didn’t know what the procedure was or what it consisted of; all I knew was that I wouldn’t have any more siblings. I remember being pretty upset, as I had always wanted a younger sibling. I was even more upset when my father came home from the hospital in pain, as I didn't understand what was going on. There were lots of frozen peas! He seemed to be relieved that he didn’t have to house and feed any more children. Even though my mother had a set of premature twins, I remember her too being upset because she couldn’t have any more children. I couldn’t tell which emotion held more sway: Sadness or relief. I could, however, tell that my father felt secure with the procedure and that he trusted his doctor. In my eyes, the vasectomy was like birth control for men.
Interestingly enough, the vasectomy was not always looked to as a means of contraception. The thought of “contraception was furthest from the minds of the early human pioneers who thought that the procedure may reduce masturbation, treat criminality, and improve quality of life.” In the modern day, we know that a vasectomy is solely used as a means of contraception and that the procedure is much more seamless than it was back in the day. Now that I’m older and understand what a vasectomy is, I’m interested in the history of the procedure and its convenience in the modern-day. How did the Vasectomy come to be such a popularized mainstream procedure?
The History of the Vasectomy
Henry Sharp performed the first vasectomy in 1899 for non-medical reasons. The purpose behind the procedure was to stop a 19-year-old boy from masturbating too much. The patient was an inmate at a reform school in Indiana. As a result of the operation, Sharp reported that the boy “became more of a sunny disposition, brighter of intellect and ceased to masturbate.” The results of this procedure led many intellectuals to believe that the vasectomy was a treatment for excessive masturbation, something that we now know is typically a result of one’s blossoming sexuality! Sharp published a work called “ Vasectomy as a Means of Prevention Procreation in Defectives.” The eugenics movement heavily influenced this work, which aimed to improve the human race by eliminating undesirable elements from the gene pool. It was based on the concept that both criminality and mental illness were hereditary. In this sense, Sharp’s work theorized that to stop crime and mental illness, those who were criminals or mentally ill should be sterilized using the vasectomy technique. In the modern-day, we know that this reasoning is not sound, but it was back in Sharp’s day. Sharp went on to position the vasectomy as a means of rendering every male-sterile who possessed undesirable qualities, whether that man was in a mental hospital or prison. From 1909 to 1924, over 6,000 people were sterilized without their consent. The government used reasons such as epilepsy to criminal behavior and insanity.
After the eugenics movement, the vasectomy was continuously performed for various reasons. In 1923, famous psychologist Sigmund Freud underwent a vasectomy as a treatment for youth. The procedure was performed by Eugen Steinach, who thought that the procedure “would cause the testicles to stop producing sperm and start producing more hormones (testosterone) and as a result, the patient would be ‘reinvigorated’.” After the procedure, patients reported decreased fatigue and increased sexual drive! It seemed that the procedure that was once used to dampen sexuality was now a cure for reinvigorating one’s sexuality. In 1935, it was proven that the vasectomy did not cause the production of more testosterone, and Eugen Steinach was sentenced to exile. After this, intellectuals began to study the procedure's impact on patients who underwent it in 1941-1949. These men all had voluntary vasectomies. They discovered that the procedure required little downtime and that 47 out of the 50 men said they would do it again when asked about their satisfaction with it. These findings set “the stage for the expansion of vasectomy as an accepted means of birth control.”
By 1971 vasectomy had become an accepted method of birth control, preferable to female sterilization because there was less risk associated with the vasectomy and a shorter recovery time. The popularization of the procedure for contraception led to innovations in its technique. In 1974, the No-Scalpel method of vasectomy was developed by Dr. Li Shunqiang. Dr. Shunqiang was looking for a way to perform the procedure that would be more readily acceptable to men, as Chinese men did not widely accept it at the time. By 1985, the No-Scalpel method made its way into America and was performed by a doctor who went to China specifically to study the procedure. Overall, the vasectomy was once a consentless procedure performed for all of the wrong reasons. However, now it’s a safe and effective component of male contraception in the modern-day!
By: Alyssa Morterud