Since the birth control pill became available in the U.S. in 1960, cisgender women have had the luxury of deciding for themselves if or when they choose to become pregnant, a monumental shift in history.
Pregnancy changes a woman from the inside out, transforming our bodies into life-giving vessels that surge with hormones to nurture and protect the life within us. It’s also women who traditionally raise children and receive blame when things go wrong.
Creating male birth control pills would give the autonomy women achieved back to men.
A contraceptive pill must be taken at the same time every day in order to be 99% effective, according to Planned Parenthood.
How can women trust men to be responsible for taking a birth control pill daily when it’s already hard for them to factor it into their own lives?
Also, what’s to say a man won’t lie and say he is taking the pill just to get into someone’s pants? Who will have to bear the consequences? Certainly not males.
It’s not just behavioral tendencies that make male birth control more difficult to create.
Females produce one egg a month while males produce millions of sperm. So it’s easier to stop females from producing one egg than it is to lower male’s sperm count enough to render them sterile, according to a Nov. 3, 2016 NPR article.
“With women, you can take advantage of their normal monthly cycle with the birth control pill. There’s nothing equivalent to that in men,” the article continues.
Male participants in a birth control study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism reported having severe acne and mood swings. Some reactions were so severe, multiple male participants opted out of the study.
Why would otherwise healthy men put up with severe side effects just to protect their female partners from unwanted pregnancy?
A March 23, 2018 Daily Wire article reports, “this male birth control pill will have the same side-effect on men as female contraceptives have on women: decreased libido,” meaning deceased levels of testosterone.
So, heterosexual couples who try out the new pill might have trouble getting in the mood because of it.
Contraceptive use in college students is already spotty. A November 2009 study of students at a large northwestern U.S. university in the journal Sex Roles found that students’ heavy drinking influenced risky sexual behaviors, some resulting in unwanted pregnancy.
When the risk of unprotected sex is so high during drunken encounters, women can’t rely on men to take a pill when condom use in these encounters alone is considered “non-normative.”
My colleague mentions the current two forms of birth control for men: condoms and vasectomies and that there ought to be more safe,
reversible options.
The reason why there are limited birth control options for men is simply because males can’t become pregnant themselves.
There are enough options for men on the market to prevent pregnancy.
The variety of birth control options for people with a uterus, the individuals who inevitably bear the brunt of pregnancy, serve their purpose.
A June 6, 2017 Study Breaks article says it all, “at the end of the day, birth control will never be the ‘shared responsibility’ of the feminist ideal.”
It should only be up to women to take the reins regarding birth control. They alone can make effective decisions that could drastically alter their bodies and lives.
