Dr. Bole discusses rise in vasectomies following Roe v Wade reversal

In this video, Raevti Bole, MD, discusses notable findings from the recent International Journal of Impotence Research study, “Rising vasectomy volume following reversal of federal protections for abortion rights in the United States,” for which she served as first author. Bole is a male infertility/andrology fellow at Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Transcription:

There were a number of key findings that we found very interesting. Some of them made sense in terms of what patients would be thinking about as this decision came out and the things that they would be worried about happening or not happening. [In terms of] people who had initiated vasectomy consultation requests and then actually showed up to visits, we saw increases in both of those numbers: a 35% increase for people initiating requests, a 22% increase in people actually coming to a clinic visit to discuss vasectomy, and no change from before the decision to after the decision in terms of how many men actually followed through in getting the procedure. So the people who showed up were still interested in having the procedure, once they came to that initial visit. Younger men are getting vasectomies than before. On average, we found a decrease in the average age from 38 years old to 35 years old, 3 years over a very short span of time, so not something that you would think was just due to chance. And not only that, when we dove a little bit deeper into the data, we looked at men under 30...and we found a significant increase in men under 30 getting vasectomies. That number actually doubled. It was 10% of our patients before the decision and went to almost 25% after the decision. Patients are making these big reproductive health decisions much earlier in life than before, and that absolutely has an impact at the population level as well as the individual level. We also found that men without kids were significantly increasing in numbers [in terms] of who was getting vasectomies. Again, that number [went] from 8% before to 16% after the decision. Those findings maybe were a little bit surprising when you just see the numbers written down, but they also make sense based on what that decision meant to many, many patients and many families.

This transcription was edited for clarity.