Planned Parenthood is offering free vasectomies to uninsured young men, despite the fact that the procedure may not be as reversible as commonly believed.
In honor of World Vasectomy Day, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri (PPSLR) will perform 100 free vasectomies in October at three of its locations.
This is the third year that PPSLR will be offering vasectomies, a surgical procedure that blocks the vas deferens, small tubes in the scrotum that carry sperm, to prevent pregnancy. The surgery, performed by a doctor, takes about 20 to 30 minutes.
Forty appointments will be available at the Central West End Health Center in St. Louis on October 19. Thirty appointments will be available in Rolla on October 20, and another 30 in Springfield on October 21. Dr. Esgar Guarin, a reproductive health doctor, will be returning to the area with his mobile vasectomy trailer, affectionately named "The Nutcracker."
The physicians from PPSLR will use a minimally invasive procedure called a no-needle, no-scalpel vasectomy, which does not require any cuts or stitches. Patients can go home the same day. However, there is another type of vasectomy that does involve a scalpel.
In this procedure, the scrotum is numbed with local anesthesia, and two small cuts are made in the skin on each side of the scrotum to access the vas deferens. Each tube is cut, and a small section is removed. The ends of the tubes are then closed by tying or sealing them using heat. The cuts are stitched, typically with dissolvable stitches that disappear within a week.
Dr. Guarin reassures patients, saying, "It's worse to go to the dentist, I always tell my patients." Nils Seubold, who underwent a vasectomy last year on The Nutcracker, shares his positive experience, stating, "I would definitely have to say it's a really good choice for people that have their minds made up about where they're headed in life... it's definitely not as scary as one would think it would be."
A vasectomy is a low-risk procedure, and most men recover within a few days. It is over 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, compared to the contraceptive pill, which is about 91 percent effective.
Following the US Supreme Court's reversal of federal abortion protections in June 2022, demand for vasectomies, a male form of birth control, surged in the US. Clinics in various parts of the country reported up to four times as many patients seeking the procedure compared to before the ruling. Planned Parenthood also saw a 53 percent increase in traffic to vasectomy information on its website after the Roe v Wade reversal. In July 2022, PPSLR performed 42 vasectomies, compared to just ten in the same month the previous year.
In response to the growing demand, lawmakers have taken action. A California law will go into effect in 2024, making vasectomies more affordable for patients with private insurance plans by allowing them to get the procedure at no cost other than their monthly premiums.
While some men use vasectomies as a means to delay having children, others seek to reverse the procedure when they are ready to start a family. However, it is important to note that while a vasectomy can be reversed, experts consider it to be a permanent form of birth control. Research published in 2021 indicates that around 90 percent of men who wish to reverse their vasectomy are successful, but approximately 10 percent are unable to restore their fertility.
Studies suggest that around 300,000 men undergo vasectomies each year, and between three and ten percent of them seek to reverse the procedure.
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