When I first saw the billboard announcing World Vasectomy Day, the image of the wriggling little sperm in “vasectomy” caught my attention. I looked it up online. I discovered an effort to get men to have vasectomies to stop the “overpopulating” of the world.
But wait a minute. Is it possible that this effort is about more than population control?
Example: A man has three children by three different mothers. He loves his kids, wants an active, uncommitted sex life, and wants no more children. He wants to be a “responsible citizen,” so he has a vasectomy. Or does he just want to have sex anytime and avoid paternity issues?
Women can take a similar approach, of course. It’s a bigger deal for us, but we can surgically make the call on no longer having children. We can have sex with whomever, whenever, no kids.
Or we can practice self-control. No surgery required.
Self-control is what separates men (and women) from animals. We can make choices for the good of others, and delay gratification. We don’t HAVE to have sex just because we feel desire (contrary to popular opinion). What we need is not more operations, but more men made powerful and noble by self-control, who will protect women from gratuitous, uncommitted sex and protect the children that might result. We need them to raise sons who will understand the same.
We also need women who understand the risks to their bodies, and who honor and protect themselves enough to recognize that men who can simply have sex will be very unlikely to commit to them or to a lasting relationship. We need them to teach this value and worth to their daughters.
That’s why sex is meant to be unbridled in marriage – so that when a pregnancy results, a family is ready to receive that child and be responsible for it. Parents can make the choice to abstain or not, if they know their bodies well enough to understand cycles of fertility and aren’t sure they are ready for a child. (Did I just say married partners could choose to ABSTAIN together? Yep, I did!)
Self-control is useful for so many aspects of life. It keeps us from stealing, from sleeping with someone else’s spouse, from overeating, from overspending, from rape, from shooting people, from cheating on tests, from peeing in the street. And it can help us plan our family sizes if we want to. So the children who do result might even be wise enough to come up with plans to care for this “overpopulated” world.
Gosh, self-control is pretty cool. It provides for children to be safe and wanted instead of being conceived in an act of passion that leaves them tragically ignored or alone. And self-control is absolutely possible for anyone of sound mind. (News flash: No one is going to die from NOT copulating when they feel the desire.)
We can pay the doctors and keep our sexual self-control flabby and barely operating—it sure is a convenient way to keep the pesky, world-devouring kids out of the picture.
But we might just need that self-control for other things. How wise is it to surgically alter our bodies versus flexing the muscles of our character?
Of course, if we all had surgery—that would solve the overpopulation problem, wouldn’t it? Completely.
But wait a minute. Is it possible that this effort is about more than population control?
Example: A man has three children by three different mothers. He loves his kids, wants an active, uncommitted sex life, and wants no more children. He wants to be a “responsible citizen,” so he has a vasectomy. Or does he just want to have sex anytime and avoid paternity issues?
Women can take a similar approach, of course. It’s a bigger deal for us, but we can surgically make the call on no longer having children. We can have sex with whomever, whenever, no kids.
Or we can practice self-control. No surgery required.
Self-control is what separates men (and women) from animals. We can make choices for the good of others, and delay gratification. We don’t HAVE to have sex just because we feel desire (contrary to popular opinion). What we need is not more operations, but more men made powerful and noble by self-control, who will protect women from gratuitous, uncommitted sex and protect the children that might result. We need them to raise sons who will understand the same.
We also need women who understand the risks to their bodies, and who honor and protect themselves enough to recognize that men who can simply have sex will be very unlikely to commit to them or to a lasting relationship. We need them to teach this value and worth to their daughters.
That’s why sex is meant to be unbridled in marriage – so that when a pregnancy results, a family is ready to receive that child and be responsible for it. Parents can make the choice to abstain or not, if they know their bodies well enough to understand cycles of fertility and aren’t sure they are ready for a child. (Did I just say married partners could choose to ABSTAIN together? Yep, I did!)
Self-control is useful for so many aspects of life. It keeps us from stealing, from sleeping with someone else’s spouse, from overeating, from overspending, from rape, from shooting people, from cheating on tests, from peeing in the street. And it can help us plan our family sizes if we want to. So the children who do result might even be wise enough to come up with plans to care for this “overpopulated” world.
Gosh, self-control is pretty cool. It provides for children to be safe and wanted instead of being conceived in an act of passion that leaves them tragically ignored or alone. And self-control is absolutely possible for anyone of sound mind. (News flash: No one is going to die from NOT copulating when they feel the desire.)
We can pay the doctors and keep our sexual self-control flabby and barely operating—it sure is a convenient way to keep the pesky, world-devouring kids out of the picture.
But we might just need that self-control for other things. How wise is it to surgically alter our bodies versus flexing the muscles of our character?
Of course, if we all had surgery—that would solve the overpopulation problem, wouldn’t it? Completely.
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