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Just so it doesn't get forgotten.
When The Lovely Harvey and I made the decision that The Boy was quite enough family for the two of us to handle we went to see what options there were.
A vasectomy seemed the obvious choice, except I lacked insurance.
Harvey had insurance for a tubal, but...
She was younger than they wanted to do such things. You had to be at least 35 before they wouldn't give you shit about your age and "what if you change your mind?"
Since she already had The Boy they could waive the age requirement.
What they got really sticky about was getting my permission.
At this point I was just a fiance, not a husband, but the administration was insisting that I sign off before they could proceed.
"What the fuck is this shit?" we asked in near unison.
Well, it turns out that in the late 1990's, there was no right for a woman to choose sterilization if there was a man in her life. That man got a veto power.
I am not certain if it was policy or law that required me to sign off on it, but it stuck in my craw that it wasn't presented as a "have you made this decision together" but "you know this means she's never going to have your kids" liked we'd never talked about it.
PS: There was no corresponding permission slip needed to get approval for a vasectomy. A man could get snipped without telling his significant other.
BTDT.
ReplyDeleteMy dear wife decided she didn't want any more children after the second one. (1979) I had no arguments with that, since I was supporting she and the kids by my self.
When they informed her that I had to sign off for her to get her tubes tied, she went somewhat ballistic on them. I still had to sign off on it, but they were just about embarrassed to ask me to do so.
Jeff Tracy
This is the kind of inequality stuff that should be fixed (if it hasn't already). A lot of times I think there is no actual law that makes this kind of thing happen, just policy for these organizations. But it still shouldn't ever have been that way.
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