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One of my school teachers nearly died from a vasectomy… no thanks, sounds like posh castration. If a woman wants me to get one, I’ll ask her to whip out her fallopians first. Well, rather than start a new thread, I wanted to cite an example of a real-life person agonizing about the vasectomy. One of the people in my circle of relationships has been calling myself and his family about this decision. He had scheduled an appointment and when he mentioned it to his Branch President that he might be out over a weekend, the Branch President said “The Church really discourages surgical sterilization except in certain circumstances”. And then his agonizing started. Now, he’s agonizing about it and is afraid to go ahead and do it for fear of not following the CHI or doing the wrong thing given the Church’s advice. He and his wife are in their early to mid-thirties, and guess what — they have 7 children already. The last child was not a planned pregancy. He is the sole bread-winner, soon to finish school, and they both feel they’ve had enough children as the number is taxing on their time and resources. Time to hang up the cleats, as they said.
He finds other forms of birth control unacceptable, unfortunately, so it’s not an option for him. He asked for my opinion, so I gave him this:
1. The CHI is not doctrine, it’s policy, and even at the WW training they said it only represented the best understanding of the people involved in it its definition at the time. Doctrine must be accepted by the Church and is embodied in the Standard Works, which to my knowledge doesn’t broach this topic.
2. No one will ever ask him to specifically whether he’s had a vasectomy. It won’t jeopardize his TR or membership since it is only “strongly discouraged”.
3. You have to set boundaries with the Church on matters of personal conscience, and in my view, this decision falls squarely into that category — a case where the boundaries seem to be more invasive than they need to be.
We then talked about callings and releases in the same light, as that is a topic near to my heart. I was heartwarmed to hear that when he was called to multiple callings in his Branch, the HC told him that if it ever became too much, to tell him so they could effect the necessary releases!!!!!!!! Yay! His area of the world is showing signs of inspiration, even though they have violated the CHI by extending multiple callings to a guy who has 7 kids and is the sole breadwinner in his family.
4. The circumstances under which the CHI advocates vasectomy are more narrow than I think they should be. We cited other cases where one might get one, as in a marriage that couldn’t likely survive the advent of another child
5. What matters, in my view, is whether he can live with turning off his creative power permanently. A doctor told me that after 5 years there may not be the right fluids available anymore, so this is something for him to consider.
6. What also matters is how he feels about it personally. I quoted Brian’s statement “the sooner you can get on your own personal compass, the happier you’ll be”.
7. We also talked about the happiness of his marriage and the impact of having to use other forms of birth control for the rest of his married life on earth. He reached the conclusion he was going to be pretty unhappy (and his wife too) with other methods.
8. It was left that if he felt right about it, after prayerfully considering it, he should do it.
9. We also talked about the CHI citing the need for Bishop involvement in this decision, and I suggested that perhaps it was none of his business.
10. I suggested that sometimes, the Church’s policies are egocentric about simply perpetuating its own existence, as with plural marriage, ‘never say no to a calling’, ‘never ask to be released from a calling’ — even at the expense of what is good for the individual.
What a therapeutic conversation….who knows what he will do…but you can see the influence of our discussions here on the conversaetion. He seemed VERY RELIEVED after we ended the discussion.
I’m glad you were able to be there for him, to just listen and provide some alternative points of view. It was his decisions to make (he and his wife). FWIW I think he followed the letter of the law in the CHI actually too: he took it seriously, prayed about it, and made a decision. They have 7 kids for goodness sake! It isn’t even like they are some sort of slackers (not that people who have more reasonable-sized families are slackers, but you know what I am saying from a cultural standpoint). IMHO, his decision really was taking the life and health of his family into consideration, in a broad but real sense. It’s very hard on most women physically to have that many (or more) children.
Amen, Brian. That is my view exactly.
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