This piece originally appeared in The Spectator and is distributed through RealClearWire. It is available to republish for free with attribution to The Spectator.
The Supreme Court has overturned the tables that have governed our mating and dating for the past half century. We ought now to expect a real-time rewrite of the sexual social compact.
Absent Roe v. Wade, organized women of the world are going to be asking more of men. Women are rightfully angry with men in general, SCOTUS men in particular — and, if you’ve been a free rider on your partner’s reproductive sacrifices, you.
Men, it’s time for our best behavior. We ought to expect a sustained pushback across the culture and public institutions. This is not a good time for a man to find himself in front of a family court judge for being delinquent on child support. Things tough at home with the missus? Open your mind and heart to marriage counseling. Work it out. The costs of male failure on the love, marriage and baby carriage fronts are going up for the foreseeable future.
But the mind of man is showing signs of waking up from its free-riding slumber. Since the leak of the Alito draft in May, Google searches for “vasectomy” look like a hockey stick. Planned Man, is the best one-stop shop for information on male reproductive responsibility — but I digress.
Men, if you are done having kids: get a vasectomy ASAP. Come up with the idea yourself and you’ll get the praise of the ladies. Because of your enlightened courage, your friends will eventually be convinced of the wisdom of your just-ahead-of-the-trend-line leadership.
Recently, I got a vasectomy from the world’s best, Dr. Doug Stein, at the without-insurance price of $590. My only regret was not doing it sooner. It was so easy and painless. Easy-peasy, no reason to get queasy.
Women of America and the world: you have a vested interest in sustaining this upward trend for vasectomies. How can women help? Don’t give up doing what you’re doing. Talk to your man. Talk to your sons and daughters about the need for shared sexual responsibility. Help them help themselves.
Women, through your subtle (and not-so-subtle) sustained persuasion, it shouldn’t be long before vasectomies have a three-to-one lead over tubal ligation — instead of the other way around, which is the present state of sexual play.
But that’s just the snip of the tip of what could happen if women seized this opportunity and got behind a solution outside the reach of the courts. There is a vast difference to be had by disconnecting the vas deferens at the beginning, not simply after the desired fruit of mating is over.
Here’s the headline: men should get reversible vasectomies — not in their thirties and forties after kids, but early as a form of male birth control.
The best birth control plan for a young man — and society — is for him to harvest his youngest and best swimmers as early as possible, put them in a freezer under lock and key and then get a vasectomy. The end. No unwanted pregnancy, no need for an abortion, fewer deadbeat dads. VD maybe; baby never.
Presently, men and society have a supply problem. There’s too much sperm in the sexual marketplace. Too much supply results in a big risk-spread. Minimize the supply in the market and you minimize the risk for everyone.
All of us, men and women, are coming to sexual maturity earlier — and we are pushing the window on marriage and children later and later. In a just, progressive society, the costs of male reproductive responsibility would be covered by private insurance, with Medicaid and philanthropy as a sexual equity backstop. Presently, most insurance covers the vasectomy procedure, as do Medicare and Planned Parenthood. With a market-based price under $600, there are no economic barriers here. The problem — and financial equity concern — is that all Americans can’t afford the storage costs. But the cost of three kids’ worth on ice is lower than what is spent on the pill — and has no comparable side effects.
If we are a serious country, concerned with keeping up with the needed population replacement to meet our obligations for existence, covering costs for freezing and artificial insemination is a demographic and social policy bargain.
But for this to happen at a level that will make a post-Roe difference will depend on women — as lovers, wives and mothers. Men are not organized; women are. Without your leadership, the second phase of the sexual revolution, where men join women as equals in reproductive responsibility, will never materialize.
Women are demanding vasectomies on protest signs — and craven politicians are putting forward legislation to require young men to get vasectomies. How about harnessing this political passion for health policy change that empowers both sexes, and does so much to stem human suffering?
Men: imagine walking into a doctor’s office when you are eighteen and walking out with the knowledge that an unintended pregnancy will not be in your future.
Based on my informal survey of mothers, they are cool with putting down their credit cards to pay for the freezer bill for their grandkids.
The future of childbirth is moving to the freezer. The upside of this movement could be more transformative than the pill.
Guy Shepherd is the publisher of Planned Man.
