Arbitrary Cutoff

As Stanley Kurtz worries over falling birthrates, Salon asks Is it Hip to Snip? and reports on a new enthusiasm for vasectomies. Problem is, doctors often refuse to perform the procedure on young men who might change their minds down the road:

It's a common practice, for example, for some doctors to make arbitrary age cutoffs for vasectomies. "If someone were to call me and say, 'I'm 28, single and I don't want children,' I would not waste their time and money to come in and see me," says Dr. Michael Warren, a urologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston…

Here's the question that young men who have gotten vasectomies are asking: Why is it acceptable to make the permanent choice to have kids at a young age and not OK to make the permanent choice to not have kids?