The Place of Sterilization

Abstract

I should first like to address myself to the task of the difference between castration and sterilization. As clear-cut as the difference is to physicians, I find an appalling confusion among the minds of the laity. Castration is utterly different from sterilization. Castration is the removal of the sex glands — in the male, the removal of the testes; in the female, the removal of the ovaries. Sterilization, on the other hand, is not that at all. By modern surgical techniques one simply interrupts the passage of the sex cells, so that the two cells, sperm and egg, cannot meet to accomplish fertilization. In the female, a roadblock is established in the Fallopian tube by tying off and then excising a small portion of each tube. The sperm can progress upward only as far as the roadblock; the egg can only descend downward as far as the roadblock. Thus, there is absolutely no opportunity for the two to meet.