Vasectomies rose after the end of Roe
economist.com
economist.com
It remains the worst decision I've made in my entire life.
Looks like something like 1-2% rate of hematoma and the same for PVPS when performed by experienced physicians.[0]
Edit: These are rates for minor complications. The incident rate for major ones requiring post-procedure interventions is 0.1%.
[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8255399/#sec-3t...
Unnecessary to be healthy, or unnecessary as in "something you do you should not" (say, like injections in the lips to make them bigger)?
Suppose this condition came about by a disease. Suppose transmission rates were 2%. Would you have unprotected sex with someone on a 2% chance of getting this condition? Assume that it was guaranteed the girl was otherwise without infection and not fertile.
What's the difference between a "minor complication" and a "major" one? Where does "life long pain and discomfort" fall? The word "requiring" seems a bit weasely (e.g. you could survive your life-long pain without surgery, so it's not required, therefor your complication is "minor" even though it significantly decreases your quality of life).
Unbelievable pushback about vasectomy value prop, here. It's a crazy common procedure. If rates of complications that mattered were high enough to matter, we'd all know about it via high rates of anecdata indicating the risk.
Why is 1% low when we're talking about lifelong pain?
To me it seems like whenever statistics get posted on HN the discussion is bound to devolve into pointless arguments. Statistics are crucial and necessary and we have to have hard data to support everything when said hard data supports MY positions, but when it supports YOURS it's obviously biased and incomplete and inaccurate and useless.
And I guess I should point out that I am in no way saying statistics shouldn't be used when making decisions. It's just that whenever I see them posted here, it means I'm not going to learn anything from that particular comment thread and it's time to move on to the next one.
It seems like an empty criticism to point out that someone's cited statistics agree with their argument.
Instead, either find a problem with the argument or find a problem with the statistics.
Furthermore, I made no claim that people ought to get vasectomies.
My intention was to counterbalance anecdotal fear mongering about a procedure that is well known to be safe and effective as form of birth control.
But let's remember that the alternative is often pregnancy, and that the risk, pain and ongoing implications associated with pregnancy and childbirth are much much higher than vasectomies.
Take responsibility folks.
Why should it be anyone's responsibility to undergo a medical procedure on the off chance that someone in the future might be at risk of something completely different?
My vasectomy was 100 percent worth it.
PVPS is known to be real, but there are very few studies on it. Nobody really knows the incidence, there is no way to predict who will get it, and all of the treatment options suck. Reversal is the best, but is very expensive and often doesn't work.
The reversal cost me ~$14k out of pocket. It's often not covered by insurance because it is considered elective.
I wish I had more to offer than an anecdote. There's some forums out there of people who got it much worse than me.
A footnote I forgot to add: the pain was only in my left testicle, while the right felt fine. This underlines the unpredictability of PVPS.
To say this without even paying lip-service to the well-known and common negative side effects strikes me as incredibly disingenuous.
The few guys I've known well enough over the years to discuss such matters who had lived with vasectomies long enough all complained of testicular pain, granulomas forming, etc.
One would so consistently walk bull-legged from the pain into our shared office I basically knew whenever he got stoned with his wife the previous weekend. He wasted numerous days on doctor visits to get it checked out and see if he had developed testicular cancer, since granulomas are easily conflated with tumors, especially when the area's too tender/painful to really probe yourself.
Living with a vasectomy is not all sunshine and roses.
And I say this as someone who feels strongly about the planet being overrun by far too many homo sapiens.
And of the several guys I know who had lived with vasectomies for a long time, none of them experienced any sort of long-term discomfort at all.
We have dueling anecdata here. I have not seen any information, in data or anecdotes, that would make me even a little nervous about getting a vasectomy.
However, there is risk with literally all surgical procedures, no matter how minor. Different people have different risk tolerances, and I am not diminishing your own personal risk assessment.
You're right, it's not like what my anecdata describes is common/confirmed by the data enough to have a medical term describing it with its own wikipedia page or anything...
I'm saying that it appears to me that the risk is very small. Whether or not it's small enough to be under your threshold of acceptable risk is an individual matter. I am not saying that people who decide it's too risky are being foolish. That's a personal decision that there is no objective right or wrong answer to.
It is a standard procedure reimbursed by social security.
Some even say they've been fine for quite a bit of time and then suddenly the pain starts.
Which in total makes me absolutely NOT want a vasectomy even though I have zero desire to reproduce.
Because it does feel plausible that it can cause trouble to lock something up in the body which is meant to be released once in a while.
I hope some day men too will have real and reliable (condoms fail a lot) self-determination in terms of reproduction, not only "suffer abstinence your whole life or risk getting financially gutted for decades."
Something changed for me, down there, after the procedure. My right testicle, in particular, is a lot more sensitive than it used to be. And there is the occasional pain. When that happens I feel around down there and the "tubes" (not sure of the anatomical terminology) feel like they're quite swollen.
Did it destroy me? Absolutely not. Can I live with it? Yes. Do I regret having the procedure? No.
But there is clearly a middle of the road scenario here. I'm never in excruciating pain. I've never needed to take pain killers for it. But every once in a while there is a mild throbbing, similar to having a mild headache and it goes away after a while. My family doctor told me that it would go away after a while but it's been 5 years since I had the procedure and it persists.
Something else that I'll say. I had children way too young. My wife and I were high school sweethearts and we got pregnant in our senior year. I love my daughters to death but fatherhood was INSANELY difficult for me. I'm pretty sure that I have Asperger syndrome and this comes with extreme noise sensitivity, freaking out when I get interrupted by anything etc. I really wish that I had understood this about myself when I was 19 years-old because I'm positive that we could have found ways to give our daughters a much easier childhood. Nevertheless, I was absolutely convinced in my 20s that I never should have had kids and that I would never want more.
Then I hit my mid to late 30s, became financially successful, way more comfortable with who and what I am as a person and suddenly felt like NOW was the time to have kids and I kind of wanted to give it another go.
People change, and while vasectomies are reversible, the advise is to consider them a permanent solution.
Just information. Everyone needs to make this extremely personal decision for themselves.
On the upside…you’ll have a long life together with your children (and maybe grandchildren), at an age when you are young enough to really enjoy it. I know people who waited a long time to have kids, and then by the time their kids were adults, they were in their mid-late sixties. They end up needing care as they age when their children are young, relatively poor, and with young children of their own…which can make it hard to care for their now-elderly parents.
Don't be cheap and get some that are actually your size.
Or to put it in more visual words:
If you had $ 200 000 in cash (that's the cost of a kid), would you secure it against theft with a 0.07 mm piece of plastic?
It's insane that this is expected of men.
Those two moving bodies are plenty squishy, and there's a lot of suspension absorbing forces there. There's also lubricant.
- which we don't even have to discuss, because there is statistics about this, and their failure rate is quite high, as said between 2% and 12% (I suppose it's a range because usage errors and quality vary).
Google "Pearl index".
Period tracking is incredibly reliable. People will tell you that women will lie about when they have their periods. However, if you can't trust a woman to tell you when she's menstruating, then that's perhaps a sign that you're not ready for sexual conduct with that woman.
The failure rate of that is in the double digits percentage AFAIK !?
Besides, as long as you are still fertile and relying upon someone else not being fertile that is not self-determination. Men can also be victims of violence.
And as soon as multiple $100k in potential alimony payment (raising a kid for 18 years costs that much!) get involved some (not all!) people will lie to your face as much as humanly possible.
I know this isn't the best contraception but I live in a country where I have access to abortion and "tomorrow" pills.
Actually do you rememeber the twitter thread when someone took apart one of those test (a pregnancy test, I assume they're alike) and then you realised it's basically a small camera doing the work of your eyes on a very cheap paper test ? https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1301707401024827392
I don't want to use one or two tests like that a month, it would be too much waste. Good news is I suppose is I should be able to get my hand on a paper tests.
Fertility awareness requires a great deal of mutual trust, and a great deal of understanding of one's body. It is not 100% reliable (although the media would have you believe this method is only for religious zealots and the irresponsible, which is very much not true) -- but it's a lot less complicated than invasive surgery.
how do you figure?
In France, its taboo and doctors take this very seriously, they will try to protect the patient "against themselves"[0].
In Quebec, its extremely normalized and common. Most family men do it in their late thirties/early forties.
[0] https://www.lapresse.ca/vivre/sexualite/201410/10/01-4808204... (in french)
The Parsemus Fundation recently sold the tech to : https://nextlifesciences.org/
Hope it works out some day
Now I'll be 40 in a few months and it appears it's no closer to market than it was when I was 20.
What a terrible way to end the article. Especially when it has the subtitle "Brothers are doing it for themselves." It's not a consolation of any amount and calling them "solidarity snips" is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. No one gave that reason with a straight face. There's no author credited on the page, I wonder why.
IIRC, it's the Economist's house style. So, if you read that magazine, you may be taking some green 20-something's pronouncements as more authoritative than they should be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonym...
> Others, who had been considering the procedure for a while, were apparently spurred by a concern that vasectomy could be outlawed next.
Is this a common concern? The only things I've seen discussed regarding vasectomies in politics in the last few years have had to do with REQUIRING vasectomies in various situations...the exact opposite of what this surgeon says his clients are worried about.
> Is this a common concern?
Perhaps in some quarters. In our polarized times, cultivating fear is an easy and effective way to motivate "your side," and the use of fear is not limited to any particular faction. The country is full of people who have pretty irrational and unrealistic and exaggerated fears of what will happen if the "other side" wins.
And the evidence is right there in the quote "Dr Doug Stein" appears to be from Florida. Abortion isn't banned there, it's just recently been severely restricted very recently. If his patents are coming into his clinic incorrectly thinking abortion is currently banned (implied by "outlawed next"), I doubt those people are going to be able to make reasonable predictions about what will happen politically in the future.
i assumed that vasectomy counts as birth control. i guess you would disagree?
My wife and I agreed that a total ban on abortion (and potentially restricted access to birth control) is no longer out of the question.
It had nothing to do with Roe but I had one this year. I'm over 40, have 2 kids and, while my wife wasn't required to sign off on it, they did ask about it several times. Meanwhile my brother-in-law, late 30's, neither him or his wife (even later 30's) ever want kids, can't find a reliable doctor to perform one in this are (not FL).
They see it as liberal men voluntarily limiting their future contribution to the gene pool, and thereby reducing competition for their own offspring to thrive and take control of the future.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-pandemic-caus...
https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-conservative-fertility-advant...
That said, you can probably query the CDC Wonder dataset to see the breakdown of vasectomies by state.
I actually think overturning Roe will accelerate abortions in some regions (and completely stop others). There were previously limits on abortions based on age. In Colorado, you can now abort up to birth, for instance.
Imo this will lead to a much larger change in the fertility rates.
Of course, it didn't really work. I'm now a wayward atheist, and none of my 4 siblings seem likely at this point to reproduce themselves to continue the process.
But the fact is, if you have two populations with very different reproductive rates, the one with the higher rate (assuming it's sustained over many generations) absolutely will subsume the other given enough time. It's just math.
But, you don't have two different populations. Identity groups (whether socially constructed races or religions) aren't isolated lineages.
Politics is the new religion, and at least current trends seem to show that it's initiating a new genetic rift.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/really-...
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/522987-the-partisan-...
A lot of conservatives have decided they don't like the indoctrination that the state is giving to kids in public school, so they are starting to homeschool their kids to make it more likely that they are indoctrinated in the parent's memes and not the state's.
I'm sure everyone does it to some degree, but surely not every "indoctrination" is equal, right? If you help foster critical thinking and show proper scientific methodology incl. how to discern good and bad sources, I'd say you're doing less indoctrination than if you don't do this and e.g. just block resources you don't like.
> I'm sure everyone does it to some degree, but surely not every "indoctrination" is equal, right?
Yes, but it depends on your point of view. I'm an A, so I think A-indoctrination is best, but you're a B, so you disagree think B-indoctrination is best (and perhaps that A-indoctrination is bad and I'm bad for doing it). If you think you're in a position to objectively evaluate which is better, you've just presented of an example of someone who's confused their point of view with objectivity. The "not equal" is in the sense of "not equally close to me."
> help foster critical thinking and show proper scientific methodology incl. how to discern good and bad sources
and B-indoctrination doesn't, we can still say that one is more indoctrinated than the other, since one doesn't simply follow their indoctrination, but actually has the tools to evaluate their position properly.
No, I didn't. Someone who is indoctrinated to "foster critical thinking and show proper scientific methodology" and does so is simply following their indoctrination.
There's always ideology that goes so unquestioned that it's hard to see it for what it really is, an ideology.
Child A is raised with homeschooling by parents that strictly believe in flat earth, reject "mainstream physics" and science in total, and Child A fully believes it all and sees conspiracies everywhere.
Child B is raised in the public school system and they have a standard science education, incl. the basics of how gravity works and so on. They also have talked in class about flat earth and disproved the theory on multiple grounds any person can try - but they have honestly tried to look into it. Child B believes in our standard models, to the best of their knowledge.
Who is more indoctrinated?
You're still not getting it. Quit looking at things from your point of view for a minute. They're both indoctrinated, and "more" in this case is simply a function of how far they are from your ideology.
Try to consider whether you really wish to treat every single viewpoint as equal.
I figured as much. It's hard to believe you're not at the center of the universe.
> If you give somebody the tools to find the truth themselves they will not be necessarily follow their parents indoctrination.
You have to indoctrinate someone with the doctrine that "the truth" as the output of those tools. The problem you're having is you refuse to acknowledge that, and arbitrarily redefine certain kinds of indoctrination as not-indoctrination.
It's probably because you need to feel that indoctrination is something that only the other guys do, because you've labeled indoctrination as bad thing done by baddies, and think of yourself as a goodie.
> Try to consider whether you really wish to treat every single viewpoint as equal.
I obviously don't. I have by own viewpoint that I prioritize over others because it's mine. I just don't lie to myself pretend that preference has a faux "objectivity."
Funnily enough that's what you're arguing - there is no truth, all knowledge is indoctrination, the only important thing is what you believe. I think that there is knowledge beyond humanity, and we are able to explore and discover more and more through scientific processes. We're not at the center, we're outside looking in.
> You have to indoctrinate someone with the doctrine that "the truth" as the output of those tools. The problem you're having is you refuse to acknowledge that, and arbitrarily redefine certain kinds of indoctrination as not-indoctrination.
No, I'm following commonly accepted epistemological frameworks. You're on the other hand re-defining "indoctrination" to mean "passing any kind of knowledge and opinion", which coincidentally means you don't really have to evaluate what you pass on - it's all indoctrination anyway!
> It's probably because you need to feel that indoctrination is something that only the other guys do, because you've labeled indoctrination as bad thing done by baddies, and think of yourself as a goodie.
Is your moral framework really this shallow? I simply acknowledge that I am fallible, and most of my knowledge is wrong. So instead of focussing on passing on my knowledge and opinions, I focus on fostering the ability to gain knowledge. But obviously there is no way someone else is doing something better than you! After all, you're at the center of the universe. You know how everything works, and what all things are. So of course you know there can't be any difference between what I do and what you do.
> I obviously don't. I have by own viewpoint that I prioritize over others because it's mine. I just don't lie to myself pretend that preference has a faux "objectivity."
You should really, really look into epistemology. There is a lot more to this world than "I thought of it, so it's what I think" - people have spent a lot of time thinking about how knowledge works, how you can gain it, and how you can differentiate truth from untruth. It seems you've either read a lot and rejected all of it, or you haven't read anything - in both cases you should give it another go, there might be interesting thoughts in there for you which you didn't come up with yourself!
Another term for those? Doctrine.
> You're on the other hand re-defining "indoctrination" to mean "passing any kind of knowledge and opinion"
That's not a redefinition, btw. Look it up.
> which coincidentally means you don't really have to evaluate what you pass on - it's all indoctrination anyway!
You seem to be overreacting.
> So instead of focussing [sic] on passing on my knowledge and opinions, I focus on fostering the ability to gain knowledge.
That's an artificial distinction, which is really the only point I've been trying to communicate throughout this whole discussion. What you call "the ability to gain knowledge" is still a collection of "knowledge and opinions," but perhaps obscured and not always clearly labeled as such. Obscuring doctrine like that is actually characteristic of deep and thorough indoctrination.
Your doctrine isn't privileged such that training someone in it is somehow not indoctrination or less so than training other doctrines.
> You should really, really look into epistemology.
Which one?
> Another term for those? Doctrine.
you show that there is literally no sense in attempting to convince you. You divide everything into black and white, where seemingly any kind of knowledge is automatically doctrine. If I bring up ways to analyze how we attain knowledge and how we can make sure knowledge follows "facts" in a philosophical sense, you just declare that to be doctrine too. You're not responding to any arguments or thoughts beyond automatically declaring them doctrine.
> That's not a redefinition, btw. Look it up.
Sure, let's do it! Cambridge says: "the process of repeating an idea or belief to someone until they accept it without criticism or question"
Dictionary.com says: "the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view"
So your definition is completely different from the first (since I mentioned critical examination), and it falls under one specific part of the second (but fails the others completely). So sure, if you completely ignore the other - more commonly known - definition, you are technically correct. If you accept the word as it is commonly used (we don't want to put you at the center of the universe, do we?) suddenly your rants are pretty baseless.
We get the last laugh.
Could you rephrase to try to help me understand?
The liberal guys are getting laid.
My consideration is here is how this might effect larger societal moves as the balance of how reproduces and who does not changes.
Getting snipped can at least be done after you've figured out what kind of family you want.
>> They see it as liberal men voluntarily limiting their future contribution to the gene pool, and thereby reducing competition for their own offspring to thrive and take control of the future.
> These are the same conservatives who complain that they ain't getting sex any more, and women are too up-tight.
Chances are you're just failing to differentiate the different members/factions of a loose grouping, so trading in useless stereotypes.
Or you might have data showing the same individuals are making all these claims and they comprise a significant portion of the "conservative" population. But if that's the case, show us.
Hearsay!
There is some truth in that.
Almost all religions place emphasis on progeny. So religious conservatives tend to procreate more.
Hedonists don't follow any such strictures. They tend towards seeking of pleasure in the here and the now, and avoiding multi-decade responsibilities that accompany child-birth. Which means their contribution to the future of humanity will be zero.
While passing on your genes is incredibly important and powerful, so is passing on memes. And a person who doesn't get caught up in the sacrifice of child rearing may be much more likely to study and develop novel ideas that spread and infect many minds.
A teacher is in some ways more influential on the future than a single parent, because the teacher influences hundreds of children's minds over a career, while a parent only creates a handful of children.
This is also why conservatives are increasingly concerned about putting their kids in public school which is seeding their minds with memes that they don't like.
The conservatives even commenting on this phenomenon mostly champion personal responsibility. ie. they would prefer you act responsibly before you require an abortion.
They like that people are taking more personal responsibility to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, and therefore not committing what they believe to be murder in the form of abortion.
They also like that liberal minded people who consider abortion an option for an unwanted pregnancy are now increasing their rates of voluntary sterilization, thereby decreasing their future contribution to the gene pool.
This could be some side-effect, but your political ideology is not genetic and therefore self-sterilization has zero impact on the country's future political makeup. Anyone making that argument fundamentally does not understand genetics and child raising. Even within families, children will often hold wildly different political views from each other, let alone their parents.
In conservative circles, it's become a sort of meme. People running out and deciding to become responsible after the "safety net" was removed in some select areas. It should be noted that repealing of Roe had zero impact on significant portions of this country - making the meme even more funny within conservative circles.
From some conservative's perspective, sure, no abortion is permissible. But that is a hard-liner's perspective, and just like the Democrat party has shifted enormously over the past few decades, so is the Republican party.
There are fewer and fewer hard-liners, and more and more folks that just think abortion is supposed to be a last resort - not the first resort.
To that end, this was a clear win for that perspective. I think more of us can agree on this perspective than we would think...
Gay people, trans people, and liberal folks who do stuff like this, are significantly less likely to reproduce.
I wonder if after a generation of this we’ll see a drop in liberalism. Kind of seems like we will.
You can already see some examples of it in Europe. Europeans are not reproducing, Islamic folks are moving in and bringing their own form of conservativism with them.