Meet the People Fighting the “Crisis in Sperm”

“When the choice is between maximizing men’s pleasure or minimizing women’s pain, society will predictably choose men,” Gabrielle Blair writes in Ejaculate Responsibly, published in 2022. Her book argues a very simple point: Men cause all unwanted pregnancies—nearly half of pregnancies in the US are unintended—and if guys could just learn to come sensibly, the abortion issue might largely evaporate.

If the US legislated male bodies the way it does female bodies, Blair writes, there could be a scenario where, at the onset of puberty, all men would be required by law to bank their sperm and get a vasectomy. Later, if they found mates and wanted kids, they could use the frozen sperm, or, if necessary, reverse the vasectomy and then get it redone post-childbearing. Blair poses this as a provocative hypothetical, but one could also read it as an optimistic approach to the problem of sperm. It suggests a willingness to give up a little bit of power now, trusting that if a man wants to have kids in the future, the technology, medical services, and sperm he needs will still be there waiting for him.

A couple days after I sent my semen–analysis kit back to Legacy, I received my results. In a 4.8 milliliter sample, I had 298.28 million sperm. Of those, around 244 million were on the move. Exciting? Not really. Normally, men get their sperm tested from a fear of infertility. My analysis didn’t show any signs I’d have trouble producing a kid—and that’s what terrified me. Over the years, I’d thought about getting a vasectomy several times but never followed through, out of ignorance, for the most part, but also fear—trepidations that turned out to be totally unfounded.

“Vasectomies, I love them,” Paul Turek, a reproductive urologist and microsurgeon with practices in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, said. “In my hands, they’re spectacular.”

A vasectomy, in which a man’s vas deferens are cut and sealed, is among the most reliable forms of birth control. Afterward, sperm are still produced, but they’re reabsorbed. And except in extremely rare cases, the procedure doesn’t impair erectile function, or influence testosterone levels; studies find many guys experience improved sexual function through reduced anxiety. Turek said that if a patient wants it undone, he’s able to restore sperm to his ejaculate with high rates of success, particularly if the procedure is less than 15 years old.

Knowing all that, I found the decision easy to make. Turek and I did an initial consultation and scheduled a date for a week before Christmas. (Turek often sees an uptick during periods of highly watched sporting events—guys presumably looking forward to some downtime with The Masters, et cetera.) I took an Uber to Beverly Hills, feeling nervous but not uncertain. The lobby was decorated with photos of Muhammad Ali and Humphrey Bogart—“I’m trying to put guys at ease,” Turek said, smiling. From there, the procedure took less time, maybe five minutes, than the surgical prep—and with jazz playing in the background, two local anesthetics, and a mask of nitrous oxide, I may as well have gotten surgery outside a Phish show. There wasn’t any pain. I barely felt a thing. Before I left, Turek presented me with a “certificate of honor” for my bravery. He was joking/not joking.

I spent the afternoon in bed with a bag of frozen peas in my sweatpants, watching Netflix. I woke up the next morning with slight bruising and a mild ache that both dissipated in two days. Thinking, What the hell did I wait for?

Sperm may be stupid, but you are not. And though any billionaires and bros in your life may say such stuff is precious, they’re working from scarcity mindset, which is all about blinders—and that’s where we get men’s ignorance of their bodies, or racist fantasies about society, or guys simply clinging to old ideas of how families ought to look. Progress in your life doesn’t need to be tied to the GDP of your scrotum. It’s very likely that you have, and are, enough.

Rosecrans Baldwin is a GQ correspondent.

A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of GQ with the title “The Future of Sperm”