Doctors say they are seeing a “drastic increase in vasectomies” following the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion back to the states, Yahoo News reported on Thursday.
“There was an increase of basically 100 percent in the number of vasectomies from the moment Roe v. Wade was overturned,” Dr. Esgar Guarin, the co-founder of SimpleVas Medical Clinic, told the outlet.
Guarin, who is a doctor trained in maternal, child, and “reproductive health” in Des Moines, Iowa, said that his office signed up 50 percent of the patients that they would normally have for vasectomies in a month “within only 48 hours” of the high court’s decision on June 24, 2022. The report noted that typically, around 500,000 vasectomies are performed every year in the United States as a form of “permanent birth control for men.”
Planned Parenthood’s office in St. Louis has also noticed an increase in vasectomies, telling Live Action in November of 2022 that the pro-abortion organization has “seen an increasing number of male-bodied people coming and requesting this service.”
“We performed 142 vasectomies in 2021. Already this year, we’ve done close to 200 in 2022,” Dr. Margaret Baum of Planned Parenthood told Live Action.
While Roe‘s reversal seems to have impacted demand, Marco Goldstein, professor of reproductive medicine and urology at Weill Cornell Medical College, told Yahoo News that other historical events have contributed to higher vasectomy rates in the past.
“During the Great Recession, there was a marked increase in requests for vasectomies, because people felt that the economy was such that they couldn’t afford to have children,” Goldstein said.
Indeed, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found that an estimated 150,000 to 180,000 more men had vasectomies between 2007 and 2009, according to the report.
“And we’re seeing exactly the same thing happening now,” he continued. “We’ve seen a doubling or tripling overall in the number of vasectomies, and they marked a drop in the number of reversals since Roe v. Wade.”
Guarin added that doctors are seeing a slight increase in men under 30 who are seeking a vasectomy, although the largest increase is from men in their mid-to-late 30s.