No stitches; no stress: Rocky Mountain Vasectomy opens clinic in Casper

CASPER, Wyo. — This story, like most stories, begins with a baby.

A “COVID baby,” as Steven Gard, MPAS, PA-C puts it. An “oops baby.”

And even though that baby wasn’t planned — by Gard and his then-wife, anyway — it would end up changing the trajectory of his career, and his life, forever.

Gard grew up in Casper, Wyoming. He went to school in Casper until he was 8 years old, and then he and his family moved to Riverton, where he would eventually graduate high school. The world of medicine always fascinated Gard, and so he followed that passion through undergrad and med school. After going to school at both Central Wyoming College and the University of Wyoming (where he also played soccer for both teams), he studied at Chatham University in Pittsburgh and completed his residency.

Upon completing his residency, Gard worked as an emergency room PA, and he loved it. He loved the immediacy of it. He loved the adrenaline. Most of all, he loved helping people.

And then, COVID happened.

“In 2020, the pandemic hit, and everybody was home,” Gard said with a wink and a nod, “and we ended up having a COVID baby. And that was great, except my oldest is 19 years old and, now, my youngest is 4. So the gap is huge. But with this baby, we were like, ‘This probably happened with a lot of people, so let’s see what the market is for this.'”

The market was good, as it turned out, and Gard said that the birth of his baby, and the idea that born with it, “provided a chance to kind of start all over and do something new.”

That “something new” was the inception and creation of Rocky Mountain Vasectomy.

“I’m emergency room–trained, and I would see these guys come in with complications from their vasectomies,” Gard shared. “In traditional vasectomies, they could cut blood vessels and cause grapefruit-sized testicles. And when you call the urology department, they’d say, ‘That’s totally normal,’ and you’d say, ‘Uh, it doesn’t look normal.’ It looks super painful and not very good. And I wanted to do something different.”

Gard trained under Dr. Douglas Stein, one of the founders of a new type of vasectomy procedure that doesn’t use a needle or a scalpel. It’s much less invasive and, as the Rocky Mountain Vasectomy website proclaims, offers “no needle, no scalpel, no stitches, no stress.”

A vasectomy, for the uninformed, is a form of birth control that the male undergoes in which the vas deferens — the tubes that carry sperm — are cut.

“The vas deferens are two tubes responsible for carrying a man’s semen from the testicles to create semen,” the RMV website informs. “Without the vas deferens, sperm have no way to exit the body and fertilize a woman’s egg, meaning that pregnancy is not possible. After the vas deferens are cauterized and clipped with a hemoclip, the procedure is essentially complete. A small hole will be left and will heal on its own. The sperm are reabsorbed causing no further problems.”

It’s a very effective form of birth control — more than 99% effective, in fact — and it gives women the chance to get off of biology-changing birth controls. It’s also easier, faster and less expensive than female sterilization.

“This is something that I felt was a huge need,” Gard said, “and I actually went down [to Florida] originally to train with Dr. Doug Stein and then bring it back to the clinic I was working in. But then Dr. Stein was like, ‘You’re amazing at these. You need to do this as a profession.'”

While Gard was flattered by the doctor’s encouragement, he was just hoping to add a procedural tool to his utility belt; he wasn’t looking to make a career out of it.

“I told him, ‘Doug, I didn’t wake up in the morning wanting to be a vasectomist,'” Gard laughed. “That was not my goal. I didn’t want to just look at guys’ junk all day. But Dr. Stein said that I was really good at it, and he’s done, like, 90,000 of these, so he would know.”

Gard said that Dr. Stein offered him a proposal: Move to Florida and take over his practice once he retires.

Gard said, in no uncertain terms, that he did not want to move to Florida, so Stein offered another proposal.

“I said, ‘Doug, I’m not a urologist. I’m a physician assistant. I’m just a PA,'” Gard remembered. “And he said, ‘You’re really, really good at this. So, I’ll tell you what — I will be your attending physician and I’ll help you open your first office.'”

And that’s exactly what Stein did.

Stein helped Gard open his first office in Montana. And then he helped him open a second office. Stein took Gard with him to Ghana, Africa, and other third-world countries to perform vasectomies there. He took Gard under his wing, and though the prospect of “looking at other guys’ junk” every day wasn’t that appealing, a calling is a calling and this, Stein said, was Gard’s calling.

“In these third-world countries, we were doing like, 50 vasectomies a day and he was like, ‘You’re keeping right up with me,'” Gard shared. “And that was huge. It’s a very unique skill, but it’s just something that I’m really good at.”

Still, Gard was hesitant to make an entire career out of it. He kept doing vasectomies as a side gig, in addition to the other work he was doing. But in January of this year, the “side gig” had gotten busy enough that he could focus on it completely.

Gard opened Rocky Mountain Vasectomy in 2020. He originally opened in Montana, with clinics in Bozeman, Billings and Miles City. In February 2025, though, he opened a clinic in Casper and officially accepted his role as a full-time vasectomist.

“We offer no-needle, no-scalpel vasectomies,” Gard said. “It causes very little to no pain, since we don’t remove any of the tissues and we don’t cut any of the tissues. The recovery is literally that evening or the next day. We ask that you rest that evening, the next day you’re at 50%, and the day after, you’re 100%. Within a day and a half you’re recovered and you can be fully sexually active with protection. You can run, jump and swim.”

Gard said that patients he’s had have gotten a vasectomy and then, two days later, ran the New York Marathon. Another got the procedure done and went elk hunting two days later.

“And the best part is, we’ve made it so streamlined that patients don’t need to have a referral. They don’t have to have a consult. It’s an in-office procedure with just a local anesthetic. They don’t need to be put under, they don’t have any eating restrictions. They can drive themselves home. The recovery time is super fast and the results are actually better than traditional vasectomies.”

Vasectomies are, typically, 99% effective. And Rocky Mountain Vasectomy is currently 100% successful.

“We haven’t had any failures,” Gard said. “We’ve done over 4,000 vasectomies so far. We do 60 a month. And we have a hundred-percent success rate.”

The idea of men getting vasectomies is not a new one, but it’s being brought up more and more due to the ever-changing politics surrounding women’s birth control. To Gard, a vasectomy is a way for men to “step up,” either after a couple is done having children or if a man doesn’t want to have children, period.

“As men, we need to step up and do that because to leave a woman on birth control, which they’re on from the age of, what — 14 or 15 until 53? The hormones that we give them in birth control are sex hormones,” he said. “And so you’re literally changing their biology by giving them something that’s supplementing and offsetting their natural hormone order. And so when you sit there and look at the depression scales, and we look at the anxiety, and we look at obesity and all of these things that are all linked back to hormones — if we can avoid that, if you’re done having children or you don’t want to have children, it’s much better to let a woman have her natural homeostasis and to let her body regulate itself.”

The idea of a vasectomy is not, and should not, be a political issue. It’s a simple, effective form of birth control that a man can do. And it’s reversible.

“This process is 97% reversible,” Gard said, “and that’s because we don’t remove and/or cut out any tissue. We a put a titanium clip in, but that clip is removable and it can be stitched and easily sewn back together.”

Vasectomies are a chance for men to take contraception into their own hands, relieving women of the physical and emotional strain that birth control could have on their bodies and their brains.

Additionally, vasectomies are a lot more cost effective, especially at Rocky Mountain Vasectomy. The clinic offers vasectomies for just $1,000 (plus tax), which, in the long run, is much cheaper than other forms of birth control.

Rocky Mountain Vasectomy is an option, that’s all. It’s something to think about, a conversation to have.

And to think — it all started with a baby.

For those who want to start the conversation, Rocky Mountain Vasectomy has available appointments on March 7 and 25. Other appointments are made on an as-needed basis. To find out more about the clinic or to register for an appointment, visit the clinic’s website.