Looking for the perfect gift for your valentine? What about a permanent, highly effective form of birth control?
After a sharp increase in requests in recent years, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts is offering vasectomies for the first time starting Saturday.
The outpatient procedure disconnects the tubes that carry sperm — the tadpole-shaped reproductive cells that make up half of an embryo — from the testicles. It takes about 20 minutes total and is performed using a localized numbing agent.
Once a month beginning Valentine’s Day, a urologist at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ Worcester clinic will perform the procedure for up to 10 patients per day. People who are interested in a vasectomy can be seen at any of the Planned Parenthood affiliate’s four Massachusetts locations — the others are in Boston, Marlborough, and Springfield — for consultations to determine if they are good candidates for the procedure.
Vasectomies should be considered permanent, said Dr. Luu Ireland, chief medical officer of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. Though there is a procedure that can attempt to reverse a vasectomy, it is highly technical and cannot guarantee a return to fertility.
In a cheeky advertising campaign, Massachusetts’ Planned Parenthood clinics and some local businesses have been distributing valentine’s cards covered in hearts, bows, and reproductive poetry.
“Roses are red. Violets are blue. If you’re staying child-free, we’ve got a new option for you,” one of the cards reads.
The Massachusetts clinics have seen a spike in interest in the last 48 hours, including four vasectomy requests, said Ireland. March’s vasectomy day is already halfway booked.
MassHealth, Massachusetts’ low-income insurance, covers vasectomies, as do many other major insurers. Out-of-pocket, the procedure at Planned Parenthood costs about $700, Ireland said.
While the vasectomy offering is new for the Bay State’s Planned Parenthood affiliate, other New England Planned Parenthood clinics already offer the procedure, including two locations in Vermont, two in New Hampshire and one in Maine.
The Massachusetts clinics’ decision to provide vasectomies is in response to growing questions about the procedure following the re-election of President Donald Trump. The US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which protected federal abortion rights, in 2022, and Trump had pledged support for allowing states to restrict the procedure as many enacted near-total bans.
The national Planned Parenthood Federation reported a 1,200 percent increase in vasectomy appointments on the day after Trump was elected in 2024.
Ireland said another driver behind the interest in vasectomies is that it takes the pressure of birth control off of women.
“We are really lucky that we live in a time where we have dozens of birth control options, but there are always going to be people for whom no birth control option works without significant side effects,” Ireland said.
A tubal ligation — also known as “getting your tubes tied” — is another permanent birth control option that seals off a woman’s fallopian tubes, preventing eggs from entering the uterus. While also safe and effective, this procedure must be done in an operating room under general anesthesia.
“If you are thinking about your loved ones,” Ireland said of a vasectomy, “it really is going to be a safer and easier thing for a man or a person who carries sperm to go through than a woman or a person who carries a uterus to go through.”
Marin Wolf can be reached at marin.wolf@globe.com.