One is already a father of eight, another doesn’t like children and a third thinks one is enough. The trio will be among up to a dozen men who will undergo vasectomies, live in front of an Australia audience and streamed over the internet, as part of next month’s Adelaide Festival of Ideas.
The event will be part of World Vasectomy Day on October 18, which will involve more than 120 doctors in 20 countries performing up to 1000 operations.
It hopes to prompt more discussion about the wider issue of male contraception and its role in population control.
The operations will be performed by Doug Stein, a Florida urologist credited with having performed more than 29,000 vasectomies around the world.
Dr Stein’s work is featured in the movie The Vasectomist, which will be shown at the Adelaide Film Festival, to coincide with the Festival of Ideas.
The film’s producer Ruth Cross hopes both the movie and the event will encourage men to take responsibility and ease the burden of fertility from women at a time when 50 per cent of the world’s pregnancies are unintended.
“For too long women have carried the burden,” she said.
“It’s a positive thing for men to step up. This is a viable solution for family planning.”
One of the volunteers, Scott Halfyard, 35, says he doesn’t like children and his wife shares his desire not to be a parent.
“To be brutally honest, I find the noise of a wailing child massively annoying, like nails on a blackboard or screeching brakes on cars,” he told The Advertiser.
Stuart Smith, 43, said he was happy with one child and had moved past the time when having more was an option.
“That chapter in our life has gone now and certainly we’re very happy with one,” he said.
Daniel Cotton, 34, already has eight children, if you include three stepchildren.
“Can you see why I’m here?” he said.
This year’s Festival of Ideas is the eighth since 1999 and will feature 66 events with 80 guest speakers.
With a history of welcoming big thinkers with grand ideas, it will consider a wide range of issues – from what the mating habits of bonobo chimpanzees can teach humans, to mankind’s ongoing quest to understand its place in the universe.
This story originally appeared in News.com.au