In over 30 years of practice, Dr. Errol Billinkoff rarely saw a man without kids come into his Winnipeg clinic to get a vasectomy. But since the pandemic began, he says it’s become an almost daily occurrence.

And he’s not alone.

“At first, I thought I was the only one who was noticing this,” Billinkoff, who brought a no-scalpel vasectomy procedure to Winnipeg in the early 1990s, told CBC News in a November interview.

“But I am part of an international chat group where doctors who do vasectomies participate and the topic came up, and it’s like everybody notices it.”

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    54·
    10 hours ago

    Giving someone who didn’t get asked or consent to being born

    How do you signal a desire to be born, practically speaking? Who do you contact to indicate your desire to begin existing?

    If you don’t want to exist, why not simply surrender your place in line to someone who does?

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        3 hours ago

        The “I didn’t ask to be born” argument implies a mechanism by which you could ask to be born.

        Go down to your local NICU and survey it’s residents. Tell me how many you meet who hold this view in the hours and days after their birth.

        Hell, give me a survey of two year olds. Four year olds. Eight year olds, even.

        I challenge you to find me any fervent anti-natalist younger than a teenager. I’ll challenge you to find any that aren’t terminally online.

        Anti-natalism isn’t a philosophy you’re born into, it’s something you develop over time through rational observation and logical reason. These are two skills you develop after being alive for some time, typically through dialogue with other living people.

        They are not conclusions you can instinctively reach in uterus.

    • Starbuncle@lemmy.caEnglish
      51·
      7 hours ago

      Ah yes, the classic “just kill yourself” argument. You totally destroyed that antinatalist.