Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion

by Gabrielle Stanley Blair

We’ve put the burden of pregnancy prevention on the person who is fertile for 24 hours a month, instead of the person who is fertile 24 hours a day, every day of their life.

Every time a man has sex, he can potentially impregnate someone,

Men’s lifelong continual fertility is the central driving force behind all unwanted pregnancies.

Women don’t know when their egg is going to be fertile.

The insights gained from these findings highlight the uniqueness of women’s menstrual cycles.

the length of the fertile window differs among women.

We treat ejaculation as something that happens at random, that is unintentional, that is impossible to anticipate or predict. And we treat ovulation like it can be pinpointed well in advance and easily predicted. Somehow, we’ve confused the two.

Ovulation is involuntary. Ejaculation is voluntary.

Based on what we know right now, birth control is riskier than any of the COVID-19 vaccines. And yet, it is prescribed daily without hesitation, often beginning at age thirteen or fourteen (sometimes younger).

She’s fertile 3 percent of the time and addressing her fertility 100 percent of the time, whether she has sex or not.

Stop by the campus health clinic at your local college, and you’ll often find a bowl of complimentary condoms for the taking.

Condoms keep all the semen in one convenient little sack, which means semen won’t get on bedding or clothing and won’t drip from the woman’s body as she waddles to the bathroom (bonus!).

condoms have double superpowers—they can prevent pregnancy, and they can prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

What condoms don’t have is a list of side effects.

Vasectomies are safe, effective, and highly reversible.

Doctors are clear that after a vasectomy you will not experience any differences in your sexual function or pleasure. You will still be able to get an erection and ejaculate, and everything will feel the same.

Women who are sexually active are expected to use birth control or an IUD. Women are also expected to insist that men use a condom, which implies that women should keep condoms stocked. (It creates one of those fun double binds women get to deal with—if she has condoms, she’s a slut, but if she doesn’t have condoms, she’s irresponsible.)

We’ve been taught the pleasure and convenience of men are paramount. We’ve been taught to diminish our own pain. And the lessons have stuck.

We don’t mind if women suffer, as long as it makes things easier for men. Another medical example

His psychological satisfaction is prioritized over the women’s physical pain.

excellent essay that explores this contradiction, called “If Men Had to Get IUDs They’d Get Epidurals and a Hospital Stay.” An

woman’s orgasm isn’t an essential part of learning about the birds and the bees.

A woman experiencing pleasure and orgasm has never caused a pregnancy.

99 percent of abortions are the direct result of unwanted pregnancy.

women enjoying sex does not cause unwanted pregnancies and abortion. What causes unwanted pregnancies and abortion? Men enjoying sex and having irresponsible ejaculations.

women have zero control over their eggs.

Unprotected sex without sperm will not lead to pregnancy.

Interestingly, when I point out that women are currently expected to do the vast majority of pregnancy prevention, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say, “This can’t be right. This seems too unequal; it feels wrong.” The imbalance only seems to strike people as out-of-whack if it’s applied to men.

The cultural pressure for a woman to favor a man’s pleasure over protecting her own body is massive and not very well understood or acknowledged by our culture as a whole.

Murder is the leading cause of death for pregnant women, often committed by the man who impregnated them.

Patriarchy teaches us that sex, for women, is a giveaway, while for men it is a takeaway. She saves herself, gives herself to the right one, and then her virginity is lost. In this equation, there is nothing in sex that’s for her to take. Whereas he takes and scores and there is nothing in sex for him to give. When her mind is programmed to give, she struggles to say “no.” When his mind is programmed to take, he struggles to accept “no.”

Men carry, abort, suffer complications from, labor, deliver, and die from 0 percent of unwanted pregnancies.

Anyone experiencing pregnancy and childbirth should expect permanent, negative changes to their body, including scarring, pain, and loss of function. That may sound like an extreme thing to say, but I would argue that it only sounds extreme because our culture consistently downplays what women experience during pregnancy and childbirth.

Women shouldn’t be expected to “get stuff done” while caring for their child. Caring for their child is already the thing they are getting done.

Every child deserves to be wanted and anticipated.

Adoption is rarely a clean slate for anyone involved.

Adoption does not always have the storybook ending we’ve been sold. It should not be approached casually or lightly, and whenever possible, all efforts to keep the baby with its birth parents should be the priority. Adoption should not be looked at as an easy fix for an unwanted pregnancy.

Our society is set up to protect men from the consequences of their own actions.

Our laws and policies could not be better designed to protect men who abandon the pregnancies they cause.

We need to drill home the fact that men are fertile every single day.

A culture of ejaculating responsibly, combined with free and accessible birth control and thorough sex education, will bring the number of unwanted pregnancies close to zero.

Don’t lecture women about their bodies while avoiding conversations with men about their bodies.

I’ll forever remember the long evening spent together as the book was nearing completion, and I was just tweaking words here and there; he read each page aloud so that I could hear if anything was hard to read or just not flowing well, and he took breaks every few pages to say kind things to me.