On my vasectomy and my girlfriend's 2nd trimester abortion
Libertarian publisher Marc Emery shares the graphic, personal stories of his vasectomy and his girlfriend's abortion. Through these visceral anecdotes, Emery has something to tell us about the legal practicality of a prohibition on abortion.
Marc Emery - April 10, 2008
I’m the youngest man in Canada to get a vasectomy. Yep. It’s true. Excluding a few young men who were forcibly sterilized under Alberta’s eugenics program (1927 - 1972) in the 1930s, my sterilization at age 20, thirty years ago, won’t make Ripley’s Believe It or Not but it’s as young as you can get.
I started browbeating urologist Dr. Jack Sales to put me under the scalpel in the summer of 1977. Dr. Sales did all the vasectomies in London, Ontario back in 1978. He consulted five days a week, then on Thursdays there would be a parade of dour-faced men in his office from 7:30 a.m. right through to late in the day, one every 20 minutes, getting their vas deferens snipped. I was getting myself “fixed” in mid-day and when I went in, so excited after 12 months of begging Dr. Sales to do it, that I realized I was the only happy-faced man there. I was bouncing in my seat, while the other five men I met awaiting their procedure were glum-faced and worried-looking. Soon it was my turn and, after doffing clothes, I got on my back on an operating table and within moments my feet were in stirrups--like a pap smear test.
A needle of some kind had gone into my ball sac to anesthetize it. I won't feel pain down there apparently, but I'm free to watch it fully conscious. I start to sweat, noticeably, as Dr. Sales got a straight razor blade, and I could feel it perfectly, but without any pain, and with it slit open my ball sac less than an inch. The incision seemed larger as I suddenly felt labia-like lips peel back from my sac. Alcohol was quickly daubed on to stop the bleeding and within a moment the good doctor, ably assisted by a nurse, found the object of my eradication, the vas, the tube that carries sperm (2 per cent of the volume of your ejaculate) from the testicles to co-mingle with mucous (98 per cent of the remaining volume). Little scissors snipped it--I could feel it get cut--and then each end was burned (cauterized) and I could smell burned flesh.
Throughout "counseling," the six-month period of monthly visits (for me, because of my unprecedented youth, it was 12 monthly visits where I repeatedly had to state my intent to get sterilized had not changed or wavered) to re-affirm your intent to get sterilized that was mandatory in those days before any procedure would be done, Dr. Sales asked me if I wanted it reversible or permanent. I chose permanent, and thus the very sterile but permanent burning of the end of the vas.
Once I felt cotton thread snaking across my gaping ball sac, and realized the doctor was sewing up my incision, I broke out in a real sweat. "Does it hurt?" the nurse asked. "No," I responded, "it's just so weird, being fully conscious and feeling the doctor's every movement in crisp, painless detail, ay yi yi..."
It was over in 15 minutes. They told me to wait 72 hours before having sex. They said it might be painful or sore for a few weeks. The operation was a success, I never felt any pain ever, and I remember clearly I only waited 48 hours to test-run the equipment.
The most common question women who’ve known me ask is, “Do you ever regret it?” And the answer is never. I’ve had 30 years of never seeing anxiety in my partner because her period is late. All the women I know today have trouble with birth control pills, Deprovera shots, IUDs, and all the other scary stuff that has been developed. The women I knew in 1977 said the same thing. Some of my male friends have had vasectomies, but the reversible clamp type, which is like a tourniquet, whereby with just a minor bit of surgery, you can get the flow restored for use at a later date. Both the incision & snip conventional method and the newer non-invasive fix are $450 to $700 in the U.S., in Canada, that fee is collected via taxation. A vasectomy is one of life’s great deals, along with Lasik Corrective Eye Surgery for $2,000, which I had done in 2000 ($1,500 back then).
When Anne first walked into my life and into my used bookshop, The City Lights Bookshop, in late August 1975, I was 17 and Anne was 17. She had moved to London from Sarnia and walked into my store looking for work. I offered dinner, and I fell in love in our first 30 minutes. I was about three weeks into dating when we first had sex, and Anne was a bright, intelligent young woman, and had fully versed herself on pregnancy prevention and was on the “pill.” I was crazy about her and after living together in her apartment on Stanley Street, I bought us a house and moved her into our “home” in April 1976. By the fall, Anne was tired in the morning and early in the evening, and I was so energetic, I thought something was not right with her health. She also complained of chest pains and being bloated or water retentive, which she attributed to a dosage problem with her birth control pills. In November, we went to my family doctor, Jack Spence. Jack had delivered me in St. Joseph’s Hospital almost 19 years earlier, and I had not known any other doctor, so after I began living on my own, going to see family doctor Spence was normal and, indeed, Jack Spence had extremely high regard for me. He always said I was very smart and would make something big of myself and encouraged me to confide and regard him as a mentor.
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