= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
gwern comments on Initial Thoughts on Personally Finding a High-Impact Career - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (56)
Two friends of mine were refused by their physician when they tried to get one. They were told women in their twenties shouldn't be sterilized, as they would change their minds later on. They had to move out of state to get the operation they wanted. When I got my vasectomy I had to listen to a full sixty-minute hour lecture on why I shouldn't get one, then was told to come back in one month, at which time I got a half-hour lecture on why I shouldn't get one, and having stuck it out for all that I got one. My post advocating voluntary sterilization is currently at -2, up from -3, and every criticism of my post is getting voted up. This doesn't directly answer your question, but I suggest getting voluntarily sterilized isn't as easy as it could be and having more professionals might change that.
Out of curiosity, did you suggest that you could bank some sperm? (Quite cheap, and quite doable.) That addresses the claimed objection and lets one see if that was the doctor's true rejection in a sense.
I did not make that suggestion or any other during the hour long lecture or the month long wait or the half hour lecture. Instead, the doctor brought it up in both lectures and said because frozen sperm sometimes failed to revive, freezing sperm was a bad idea and thus another reason to not get a vasectomy. I got my vasectomy at the most lefty, pro-family planning agency in Portland OR. Getting a vasectomy is not easy.
Perhaps I am being uncharitable, but that sounds like a completely bogus rejection: you don't need much sperm to revive, you can bank more than one batch of semen, and all the mentions I've seen of the topic say you can expect something like 40% of the sperm to thaw without problem.
When one party holds all the cards (ability to conduct surgery) and another party holds no cards (request for surgery), the first party can say and do just about anything they want. All I could do was nod my head and say yes, okay, yes, I understand, yes, okay, yes, I understand, okay for a month and then I got what I wanted.
I fear I have contributed to taking this thread too far from its original topic.