Birth control for men is a good idea
When you think of birth control, you probably think of the birth control pill for women. A pill that is taken every day to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Women also have the option to get a birth control implant as well to have largely the same effect. There’s all these options of birth control targeted towards women however there are very few options for men.
Men are virtually left with two options when it comes to birth control: wear a condom or get a vasectomy. Condoms have a risk of tearing or not being worn properly. Although vasectomies are largely successful, the success of getting the procedure reversed depends on the skill of the medical professional performing the procedure. When there’s so many options of birth control for women but very few for men, it can create a burden, especially in the case of a relationship between two partners. This burden being that only one partner in the relationship, usually a woman, has to take birth control which will subject them to numerous side effects from bleeding, nausea, weight gain, headaches and even depression.
I think there needs to be more options for male birth control so as to help eliminate that burden. There’s a common analogy used to support male birth control which goes: “It’s better to take the bullets out of a gun than to wear a bulletproof vest.” This means that it makes more sense for men to use birth control than women because it eliminates the large risk of pregnancy starting with the man, before the sperm leaves the body, as opposed to working to eliminate the risk later on. That said, I think it makes sense for men to have a birth control pill, but I don’t think that should shift the “birth control burden” from women over to men, because then you’re dealing with the same issue of only one partner using birth control and being subject to side effects and then we’re back where we started. So I think these options should be available to both sexes so that there is no burden and the risk of pregnancy is lowered substantially with both parties on birth control.
Experts are working on a male birth control pill, according to Northwest Primary Care, but it barely ever makes it past clinical tests. NWPC reported that Executive Director of Male Contraception Initiative Aaron Hamlin said he worries men wouldn’t be interested in a pill because they aren’t physically at risk for pregnancy. This is a shame. This mentality essentially says that men shouldn’t worry too much about contraception because they aren’t the ones getting pregnant. I also think that mentality reinforces the idea of a birth control burden because it says only women should worry about it because if something goes wrong, they’re the ones getting pregnant and that’s not the problem of their male sexual partner.
I think a male birth control pill is long overdue and I think it would help eliminate the birth control burden off of women.
