There’s a Mobile Vasectomy Clinic Nicknamed ‘The Nutcracker’ (Yes, Really)

The first World Vasectomy Day since the fall of Roe v. Wade is next month, and Dr. Esgar Guarín has a unique plan to commemorate it: He’ll be traveling across Iowa in a mobile vasectomy clinic and offering 40 free vasectomies.

Yes, really. The clinic, jokingly nicknamed “the Nutcracker,” is even decorated with images of sperm, the Associated Press reported. 

“It’s a very particular moment in reproductive rights in the United States. And we need to talk about it,” Guarín told the Associated Press.

Health care professionals across the country have reported a surge in requests for vasectomies since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. One Florida urologist and vasectomy told VICE News that his vasectomy registrations tripled the week after the June ruling. Florida has now banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The next month, an Iowa doctor told the Des Moines Register that his health care center had seen a 90 percent jump in emailed requests for vasectomies. “Every email has a sense of desperation,” the doctor said. “‘I want to get this done as urgently as possible.’”

(One Motherboard writer even got a vasectomy in July in response to Roe’s overturning.) 

Planned Parenthood’s website has seen a 53 percent increase in searches for vasectomy information, a spokesperson told the Associated Press. Planned Parenthood is planning to partner with Guarín, whose tour will kick off in November with performing 60 free vasectomies at Planned Parenthood clinics in Missouri. One of the doctors who will be working with Guarín said that she sometimes plays songs like “Great Balls of Fire” and “The Nutcracker Suite” during appointments with vasectomy patients.

Compared to tubal ligations, the sterilization procedure for people with uteruses, it’s far easier to reverse vasectomies. Vasectomies also tend to be easier and cheaper.

“At least men are waking up in our country and saying this is something we can do. That’s very nice,” Guarín told VICE News in July. “The problem to me is that it took restricting the right of an individual to be able to make decisions about her own body for men to start waking up.”

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