A friend of mine wrote on her Facebag tonight about having to explain to a doctor why she didn’t want to have children.  I remember being in a similar position a few years back, and jokingly offered what I wish I could have said at the time: Because I fear that some day my kids will grow up to be overeducated presumptuous douchebags like you.  If only.  Come to think of it, saying that to a medical professional would probably just confirm that I lacked the maturity to make such an epic decision about my reproductive system.  My curiosity got the better of me, so I put what I thought would be the male version of this situation to the internets:

Is a guy allowed to have a vasectomy without a) having children, and/or b) receiving counselling beforehand?

I was sure that men didn’t have anywhere near a hard a time as women when it comes to reproductive rights.  About seventy comments (and one surprise conversion to tubal ligation) later, I knew that I had what it took to fuel at least one full blog post, maybe more.  Please note that the following may contain triggering material to do with babies, not having babies, girly bits, and other wonders of humanity.  If you made it through close encounters of the gynaecological kind in one piece, you might be okay with this one.

There are many reasons why I am bothered by other people, even medical professionals, sticking their nose into my reproductive business.  Oh sure, they usually mean well.  Thing is, for the most part, they don’t know me.  When I was nineteen and pregnant, scared out of my mind and on the verge of self-destruction because I had kept it a secret until I went to a doctor to organise a termination, a couple of things happened.  I think I had to have a counselling session to make sure that I was making the right decision, which I thought was stupid because a) how the hell was I meant to know whether I was right or wrong, and b) it had taken me weeks to even step into the clinic and say what I wanted to do.  As if that wasn’t traumatic enough, the father chose to pass on the wonderful information (straight from his nurse mother’s mouth) that if I went through with it, I could have trouble with pregnancies later on in life, and the surgery was risky for me personally, too.  If anything, I should be thankful for the fun facts I got from the father, because it gave me even more resolve to not have the baby, or get pregnant ever again.

I remember my counsellor asking me what reasons I had to terminate, and I rattled off some of the obvious ones: I thought I was too young to be a suitable parent, I wasn’t in a serious relationship at the time, I was still at uni and only working part-time, and my parents were going to disown or kill me.  Thinking back on it now, it’s kind of bullshit that I even had to give reasons, because that’s almost an attempt to convince someone to keep their baby.  Maybe they were trying to ascertain whether I had thought everything through, or if I’d been coerced in the first place to have an abortion.  Always the optimist, my counsellor gently suggested that my parents may end up being more supportive than I first thought, but I shot this down by saying that my dad had said in casual conversation a few weeks back, ‘You know, the worst thing you could do for your life right now would be to get pregnant, so be careful.’ More fun facts from another father that have me further convinced that I’m probably unfit for parenthood.

Perhaps the one good thing that came out of this whole escapade was that due to some ultrasounds I wouldn’t have otherwise had, it was discovered that I had dermoid cysts growing on my ovaries.  Nothing life threatening at the time, but if I hadn’t noticed them early on, I might have ended up in a pickle if they grew out of control and burst or anything like that.  It wasn’t until a few years later that these cysts reappeared, and they were too big to be removed by keyhole surgery like the first time around.  I was in my mid-twenties and still not overly concerned about becoming a parent during my lifetime, so when doctors said to me that they might have to remove an ovary if there was too much cyst attached to it, they were surprised when I said I wasn’t fussed about it.  It was as if I was seen as too young to make any trustworthy decisions about my future, even though I’d spent most of my life not wanting to have children.  I recall being told that I might change my mind later and regret it, that there were plenty of women who wanted babies and couldn’t have them so I should be grateful for all the working ladyparts that I had, and possibly the worst thing of all – what was I going to do if I met a man who wanted to have kids with me?  Mind you, I didn’t have the balls at the time to say what I wanted to, which was something along the lines of: Get these cysts out of me and leave my love life out of it, who the fuck do you think you are – Dr Phil?! Or I guess I could calmly suggest that I’d pursue similar avenues to other couples that are unable to have biological children.

If I genuinely had a choice, I would have had some eggs frozen and got my tubes tied years ago.  I know it’s not as easy as that, and I also know that many folks are fine with their contraception methods of choice.  After wrangling with the pill and condoms for years, and a nightmare time with depo injections, I started looking into getting a copper IUD (who would’ve thought that chowing down synthetic hormones was a terrible way to treat one’s body?) but was advised to try a different pill instead, because IUDs weren’t recommended for women who hadn’t had kids yet.  Quite a costly prerequisite for contraception, hey?  The older I get, the more convinced I am that I’m not going to have children, and the harder it seems to get my point across about this.  I figured a while ago that if I wasn’t going to have kids by thirty-five, I wasn’t even going to try, and although I’m married now I think it’ll take the best part of four years to settle in the same country as my husband let alone be stable enough to parent.  You may think this is a happy or sad thing, but declare your bias for what it is, and if you’re a medical professional, I honestly don’t see why I need to justify my beliefs.

It’s all too easy to go forth and multiply, and I’m probably just paranoid of taking a flying leap into parenthood because I fear that some day my kids will grow up to be wildly ignorant blogging jerks like me.  For all the amazing, intelligent, capable and responsible parents out there (you know who you are), there are plenty of fools that never had to answer to medical professionals or a jury of their peers before bringing a new life into the world.  I think society would be a different place if we put more emphasis on the people that were choosing to have kids, rather than the ones who opt out.

If only.