In over 30 years of practice, Dr. Errol Billinkoff rarely saw a man without kids come into his Winnipeg clinic to get a vasectomy. But since the pandemic began, he says it’s become an almost daily occurrence.

And he’s not alone.

“At first, I thought I was the only one who was noticing this,” Billinkoff, who brought a no-scalpel vasectomy procedure to Winnipeg in the early 1990s, told CBC News in a November interview.

“But I am part of an international chat group where doctors who do vasectomies participate and the topic came up, and it’s like everybody notices it.”

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I bet they don’t get the same amount a shit a childless woman would going in to get her tubes tied.

    • Hathaway@lemmy.zip
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      20 hours ago

      I’ve (27m) been told no by multiple doctors. So, sorta? Granted. Last time I tried I was 24 but I hasn’t been easy. Maybe it would be now. I stopped trying.

      • Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        13 hours ago

        Weird, you need to find yourself a new doctor. I got mine at 23 and the first time I ever spoke to any doctor that seemed like they were against it was actually only a few months ago, I’m 28 now. Even then they didn’t really seem like they were against it so much as they didn’t seem to understand why anyone would want one so young.

        When I first asked my gen prac about getting snipped he said it was a little unusual for someone as young as me but he said that while actively putting in the referal so it isn’t like he was trying to talk me out of it. At the urologist he just asked the standard quick questions of “you understand that it is permanent?” And " you’re sure?". Then he put me on a table and got to work.

        As a humerous side note, there is one thing I didn’t like about getting mine done so young. My urologist (and likely urologists in general) are used to performing vasectomies on much older guys who have a fair bit more scrotal droop to work with. Young perky me didn’t have that much droop. It also didn’t help that the sterilizing wash the sadists used was ice cold and the room where it was done was freezing. So my poor frozen bits were trying to ascend to party with my tonsils meanwhile this doctor was pulling on them like they were excalibur and he was itching to be crowned king of england just to try and get some slack to work with. Definitely did not enjoy that part. Still worth it though.

        • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
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          5 hours ago

          When I do smoking cessation education and I talk about how nicotine paralyzes your cillia (little hair / whip things that keep your respiratory tract clean) so when you quit they wake up to all this cigarette gunk, I like to describe it thus: imagine somebody came into your work and roofied you then smeared shit all over the floor walls and ceiling. You’d wake up like WHAT THE FUCK. Anyway that’s why you’re hacking up tar-mucous balls right after you quit; your cillia are PISSED. More medical education needs more memorable descriptions to increase retention.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      The female procedure is a lot more invasive than the male procedure. That’s why I had mine done instead of my wife undergoing the surgery.

      .

      And, yes I do realize that’s not the point you were trying to make. But it is a factor.

      • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The factor is the self appointed managers of women’s biology. They don’t want them women to steal kids from some future man. This is the basic line fed a woman I knew who wanted to be sterilized since her family carried the genes for a deadly dehumanizing genetic disease and some shithead doctor told her she was selfish for not wanting her future man to have a choice about kids. She left the southern us and went up north to get he procedure done. When she returned she found a new doctor. This was over twenty years ago. Long before this latest batch of idiots.

    • nevetsg@aussie.zone
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      21 hours ago

      There are plenty of socially acceptable ways a woman can use to prevent pregnancy.

      • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Yes like tubal ligation. Its very socially acceptable procedure unless your society is a bunch of freedom hating trash. Its only the immoral right that think they have the right to freedom of choice. Their choice only of course.

        • nevetsg@aussie.zone
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          11 hours ago

          Going off the negative reaction to my comment, I guess people don’t know about the multiple different versions of the pill. There is also that thing that gets inserted in their arm… I am sure there are plenty more that I don’t know about.