Is it hip to snip?

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 17:32:00 +0000

Justin Moran, 29, an intensive care unit ward clerk in Spokane, Wash., and his fiancie, Michelle Barros, 35, aren't getting married until Labor Day weekend, but they've already checked one thing off of their premarital to-do list: Last May, Moran got a vasectomy. "We both don't want kids, and I got tired of sweating bullets until Aunt Flo came for her monthly visit," he says. "I used to worry so much about accidents that sometimes we would just not have sex."

Moran first considered getting the procedure, which permanently blocks the tube carrying sperm from the testicles to the penis to prevent pregnancy, when he was 23 and in the Navy. "But none of the doctors would consider it," he says. "They said I was too young and that I would change my mind."

He didn't.

So when things got serious between him and Barros early last year, he decided to take action. They both hated condoms, and Barros had sworn off birth control pills after she experienced bad side effects. "We're in it for the long haul so it made sense to snip-snippy," he says. Barros said she was thrilled. "We both wanted peace of mind as soon as possible," she says.

Cut and run

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 20:56:00 +0000

Several months after Jennifer Feeney, 34, a veterinarian in New Jersey, found out that she was pregnant, she read an article in Time magazine about celebrities such as Madonna and Elizabeth Hurley choosing to have C-sections -- not because they needed them, but because they wanted them. "I thought, Wow! That's something I'd do," she says. At her next appointment, she joked with her doctor about scheduling a cesarean birth. When he was receptive to the idea (while at the same time warning her of the risks) Feeney decided that an elective C-section was the best option for her.

"I absolutely dread the entire thought of laboring and delivering," says Feeney. "I can't see myself sitting around moaning, panting, sweating and screaming while people poke and prod at my vagina. It just seems so unnecessary to me."

Salon.com > Dana Hudepohl

Is it hip to snip?

Cut and run