Vasectomies Should Not Be Used as Punishment
By Amanda Marcotte,
Slate
| 06. 18. 2014
Untitled Document
Put this in the "can they even do that?" files. Jesse Lee Herald of Edinburg, Virginia, received an unusual sentence for child endangerment, hit-and-run driving, and driving on a suspended license: 20 months in prison, five years of probation, and a vasectomy. As part of his plea deal, Herald had to agree to get snipped when he got out of jail. He's not allowed to undergo a reversal until his probation is up.
Herald has a fairly long rap sheet already, including a previous hit-and-run conviction, but it wasn't just his life of petty crime that inspired the mandatory vasectomy, according to what assistant prosecutor Ilona L. White told NV Daily:
White said her motivation in offering the vasectomy option to Herald stemmed from concerns raised at sentencing hearings in earlier cases about how many children have been traced to him from different women.
"It was primarily due to the fact he had seven or eight children, all by different women, and we felt it might be in the commonwealth's interest for that to be part of...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
By Jacob Bogage, The Washington Post | 09.03.2025
The conservative group behind the Project 2025 governing playbook for President Donald Trump’s second term is set to propose sweeping revisions to U.S. economic policy meant to encourage married heterosexual couples to have more children.
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing...
By Caroline Kitchener, The New York Times | 08.21.2025
Less than two weeks after an Alabama Supreme Court decision upended in vitro fertilization in the state and prompted a national backlash, over 100 conservative congressional staff members and I.V.F. skeptics crammed into a meeting room a few blocks from...
By Carter Sherman, The Guardian | 08.23.2025
For Erica L and her husband, in-vitro fertilization was the “nuclear option”.
After two years of trying to conceive, Erica and her husband had no idea why they could not have a baby. Doctors said only that they had “unexplained...