Question Regarding Vasectomy/Ablasion/Sex/Sin

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Hospitaler

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Sorry for the crazy title. I wanted to make sure members with some experience in this area saw this. Here is the issue:

Before I decided to become Catholic (or even Christian for that matter), I had a vasectomy after my wife and I decided we were done having kids. I understand the Church’s teachings about this. I truly felt remourse after I decided to become Catholic. I was baptized into the Church this weekend so I know my sin for this has been forgiven.

However, my wife has experienced some fairly serious “female issues”. Since I have had a vasectomy, the doctor decided to do an ablasion instead of a full on hysterectomy. She will still need to do this in the future, but this bought her some time since she is still young (36). Basically, this ablasion made her uteros look like Hiroshima after the bomb (why the doctor felt the need to show me pictures, I don’t know…). Anyway, if for some reason she became pregnant, it would be life-threatening to her and the child, so a reversal of my vasectomy is out.

In short, my sin for having a vasectomy has been forgiven and she did what she did for health reasons, so are we still committing mortal sin if we still have relations with each other since there is no possibility for the creation of a child?

I just got my slate cleaned this weekend and I don’t want to get off to a bad start right away with the big guy…

😊
 
What I’m getting from your post is that you had a vasectomy before you realized the implications of it and have gone to confession. Your wife has had a medical procedure done that would make pregnancy life-threatening. While I see no problem with having relations since you have confessed your sin and she did not intentionally have the medical procedure done to prevent children, I do see a slight problem if your vasectomy were to fail and your wife were to get pregnant. In that scenario, what would you do?

Having relations isn’t the problem here as you aren’t required to reverse sterilization. But I do see an ethical problem if you felt that abortion would be necessary if your wife were to become pregnant. In that case, having relations seems very wrong.

I hope someone else can weigh in on this…
 
Hospitaler,

Welcome home! And welcome to Catholic Answers! I hope you find your experience here to be edifying.

The short answer is no, the Church does not require you to get a vasectomy reversal, nor must you be celibate in your marriage. Some couples who have sterilized themselves choose to practice natural family planning in order to demonstrate their genuine contrition and repentence to God, but this is not required either.

I would urge your wife, however, to consider finding a pro-life, pro-NFP doctor anyway. I don’t know what female issues she is dealing with, and we aren’t allowed to give medical advice on this board anyway, but it’s possible that there might be alternative treatments other than ablating her uterus. You can find a list of NFP-only doctors on One More Soul [www.omsoul.com];](www.omsoul.com]😉 these physicians tend to be more concerned with preserving ferility. This could be very helpful in the future if you do decide to get your vasectomy reversed.

God bless, and again, welcome home!
 
First off, CONGRATULATIONS on your pregnancy kevinsgirl! I wish you the very best. I’m sure I’m not the first to tell you what a life changing experience it is to have little rugrats running around.

To tell you the truth, the biggest reason I had the vasectomy done is because I was strongly against abortion even before I became Catholic and my wife is a Cradle Catholic. That’s why I chose this route in the beginning. So if my wife had become pregnant prior to her procedure, so be it.

I get where you are going. I obviously don’t want to do anything that will put my wife’s life in danger. So it becomes a question of how much do you trust a vasectomy. My wife has made it clear that she is ok with this but yeah, it is a serious consideration. I’m not looking for (name removed by moderator)ut in this regard. She and I will continue to discuss this.

I’m curious to find out if we would be doing something wrong in the eyes of the Church.

And please don’t look at this as a selfish husbands plea to find a reason to continue to have relations with his wife. She is probably more adamant about the idea than I am.
 
Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut nodito. Her condition was/is such that her only real option would have been a hysterectomy had I not had a vasectomy. She didn’t want to go though that yet so the ablasion really just bought her some time before she has to have the other done.
 
Hospitaler said:
Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut nodito. Her condition was/is such that her only real option would have been a hysterectomy had I not had a vasectomy. She didn’t want to go though that yet so the ablasion really just bought her some time before she has to have the other done.
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Hi Hospitaler!!! Welcome to the Church!!! It is so wonderful to have you!!! A vasectomy reversal is not required, though some choose to do it after careful reflection and prayer. What you need to know is that no procedure can be done to alter your body in order to avoid having more children. If a Catholic couple cannot have more children, they cannot alter their marital embrace to make it sterile for this purpose, they can choose to avoid sex during the woman’s fertile time, but they cannot “mutilate” the act in any shape or form. A woman can have a hysterectomy if they need it for medical reasons, as in that part of the body is diseased etc, but not if the purpose is to not have more children, regardless of why the couple has decided to not have more children. This is why I am having trouble understanding why the dr would decide on the treatment for her issues, her body, based on whether or not you have had a vasectomy, your body. So, its not ok to have a hysterectomy or any procedure if the only purpose is to avoid kids, the Church does not require every man who has had a vasectomy to reverse it, and you can freely enjoy the marital embrace, and use NFP if it is necessary to avoid pregnancy (which it sounds like it is). Please let us know if you need resources related to NFP, there are many people on these forums that use NFP and would be more than happy to give you some links and info. I hope this somewhat helped.
Again, welcome to the Church!!! How awesome!!!
 
Hospitaler said:
First off, CONGRATULATIONS on your pregnancy kevinsgirl! I wish you the very best. I’m sure I’m not the first to tell you what a life changing experience it is to have little rugrats running around.

To tell you the truth, the biggest reason I had the vasectomy done is because I was strongly against abortion even before I became Catholic and my wife is a Cradle Catholic. That’s why I chose this route in the beginning. So if my wife had become pregnant prior to her procedure, so be it.

I get where you are going. I obviously don’t want to do anything that will put my wife’s life in danger. So it becomes a question of how much do you trust a vasectomy. My wife has made it clear that she is ok with this but yeah, it is a serious consideration. I’m not looking for (name removed by moderator)ut in this regard. She and I will continue to discuss this.

I’m curious to find out if we would be doing something wrong in the eyes of the Church.

And please don’t look at this as a selfish husbands plea to find a reason to continue to have relations with his wife. She is probably more adamant about the idea than I am.
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Thanks so much for the warm wishes! 🙂

I’ve been thinking more about your situation and I think it would be a good idea for you and your wife to learn about NFP. Basically you only have relations during your wife’s naturally infertile times of each month. I think that is what I would do in your situation because of the serious consequences to your wife if she were to get pregnant…
 
No, you and your wife are not committing any sin when you engage in marital relations.
 
I don’t see any moral problem at all here. A Catholic who gets a vasectomy is not required to have it reversed, even if he regrets the vasectomy later.

As far as the uterine ablation is concerned, wouldn’t they tie her tubes as a part of this procedure? I think that a uterine ablation is a little like a hysterectomy in the sense that there is no place for a fertilized egg to go. Maybe there is someone in the medical profession who could explain this procedure a little better.

In the “Ask an Apologist” section, they said that a uterine ablation is morally ok if needed for medical reasons.
 
NFP sounds like a good plan in our situation. I am familiar with it but I will certainly find out more about it. I just didn’t really put two and two together here. I’m a little slow sometimes…

Listener, I’m not sure why they didn’t tie her tubes at the same time. After my wife told me what an ablation was I kinda lost track of everything else she told me. It didn’t sound like fun…and after “seeing” the results, I’m sure it wasn’t. I’d have to ask my wife why tubes weren’t tied…

I don’t mean to play the ignorant male card here. When my wife started talking about burning things inside her body, I decided to just shut up and be caring and supportive. I’m not squemish, it’s just the thought of these things happening to my wife. If we men can’t fix it, we feel lost and helpless. Regardless of what we say, duct tape doesn’t fix everything…
 
Hi, I’m an NFP instructor. One thing you and your wife can do to learn NFP is to learn it online through Northwest Family Services. Also, you might look into using the ClearBlue easy fertility monitor. It will show you when your peak fertility is and you can just avoid relations on Peak and High days. That would probably be a sufficient safeguard (and it’s not contraception!) along with the vasectomy.

Read Humanae Vitae. If your marriage, your wife’s health, your family, or your obligations to others would be adversely affected by another pregnancy, you are entirely justified in avoiding pregnancy for a while or indefinitely. You cannot help the situation here and since your wife’s operation was done for medical reasons, there is no sin at all in having relations. There are a lot of couples who are naturally infertile and they aren’t sinning by being together…

Good luck and welcome home!
 
Thanks LHMercy and everyone else. I will certainly look into NFP. I believe we have someone at our parish who has been trained in this but it is nice to know there are more resources out there.

God Bless all of you. It’s good to be home…

🙂
 
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