Getting sterilized, a less rare choice among French men

“I was 39, I said to myself: I’ve had two kids, should I have another? Well no, I knew I wouldn’t want it anymore“, tells AFP Ronan Lerigoleur, a college professor who, at the end of 2020, chose a vasectomy. The operation amounts to being sterilized, via a ligation of the channels which allow sperm to escape from the testicles. It is therefore a method of contraception considered definitive. Because if we can sometimes cancel these effects by another operation, we cannot be sure in advance. It is also the only choice of contraception which available to a man, apart from the systematic wearing of a condom. Publicized for several years, alternative methods such as contraceptive rings have not been scientifically proven.

In certain countries, particularly Anglo-Saxon ones, vasectomies are common, even if they tend to lose popularity. This is the case in the United States, Australia and South Korea, where more than one in ten women rely on their partner’s vasectomy to avoid having children.

A lighter operation in recent years

In France, the situation is very different. Authorized only since 2001, vasectomies have, for years, been carried out in tiny numbers. Certainly, the situation seems to be starting to change. According to a study, published Monday by Health Insurance and the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM), more and more French men are choosing sterilization. “The number of vasectomies has increased every year since 2010, from 1,940 vasectomies in 2010 to 30,288 in 2022, a fifteen-fold increase.“, summarize the authors of the study, supervised by epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik.

Now, there are even more men than women choosing a form of sterilization. The authors of the study see this in part as a consequence of the Essure implant affair, commonly used as a method of female sterilization before being withdrawn from the market at the end of the 2010s due to adverse effects. This crossing of curves is also linked to the progression of vasectomies. This is difficult to explain, the authors recognizing that “sociological studies” would be necessary. “The reduction in the burden of the practice may have led men to resort more to vasectomy“, says demographer Mireille Le Guen, a specialist in contraception issues, to AFP.

“Mental load” of contraception

Most vasectomies are now carried out during the day at the hospital, whereas a significant number of patients still had to spend the night there a few years ago, often under general anesthesia. But Ms. Le Guen remains cautious about reading an embryonic trend. Although vasectomies are on the rise, they are starting from so low that their frequency remains low: around 0.15% of the men concerned – or, according to the study, adults under 70 – made this choice in 2022. “There is a possibility that we are moving away from a marginal practice, but let’s keep in mind that this still concerns very few men.“, notes the demographer, who nevertheless notes a “diversification of profiles” towards slightly more advantaged environments than before.

It is therefore too early to judge whether vasectomy is less frightening due to its potentially irreversible nature – a four-month reflection period remains imposed on French people tempted by this operation – or due to unfounded fears surrounding its supposedly negative effects on activity. sexual. It is also difficult to conclude that there is an effect of increasingly visible feminist discourse in favor of better sharing of the “mental burden” of contraception, the responsibility for which most often falls on women via, mainly, the taking of contraception. ‘a pill. This is, in any case, one of the considerations that motivated Ronan Lerigoleur. “My wife didn’t always tolerate the pill well.“, he explains. “There is no photo: I had an operation and it was fixed. Otherwise, it was for life.”