Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion

by Gabrielle Stanley Blair

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

Ultimately, trying to track a woman’s fertility by watching the calendar or watching for physical signs, or using an app, is not a tenable form of birth control.

Fertility tests do exist, but they don’t solve that pesky “five-day sperm fertility window” issue.

Men can control when they ejaculate. Men can control how often they ejaculate. Men can actively choose to remove sperm from their own body and place it into someone else’s body. And men’s sperm are active. Upon ejaculation, sperm immediately seek out an egg to fertilize.

Ovulation is involuntary. Ejaculation is voluntary.

88 percent of all women have used contraception.

No complaints, please. That’s just how birth control is. Millions of women take this, so whatever you’re dealing with can’t be that bad. If you want to be sexually active, this is the price you have to pay. Suck it up.

She decides to keep taking the Pill—ingesting hormones daily and dealing with the side effects—just in case, but she doesn’t end up having sex with anyone for several months.

Men, consider what your girlfriend/wife/partner is doing for you. She’s fertile 3 percent of the time and addressing her fertility 100 percent of the time, whether she has sex or not.

What condoms don’t have is a list of side effects. They don’t cause depression, mood swings, blood clots, liver failure, weight gain, acne, strokes, or anything else on the list of side effects for hormonal birth control.

So, the Pull-Out Method is 96 percent effective when men do it perfectly.

Is it fair to expect men to use condoms correctly? The answer is a strong yes. If women are expected to learn how to use their complicated birth control correctly, we can expect the same thing from men regarding their much-easier-to-use option.

Because we’ve been told (in books, in movies, in memes) that it doesn’t feel as good as sex without a condom. (Meaning it doesn’t feel as good for men. What it feels like for their partner doesn’t really enter into the discussion.)

“It is very difficult and emotional to read ‘no one is forcing you to have unprotected sex’ when men do. All the time. Boyfriends and partners and abusers—the whole spectrum. Men pressure us for unprotected sex all the time.”

Men who have practiced using condoms and experimented with different varieties and use lubrication know that condoms don’t diminish their pleasure during sex in any significant way.

Doctors and healthcare providers agree tubals are more invasive, riskier, and more complicated than vasectomies.

there has never been a documented death from a vasectomy. However, many women have died from anesthetic or surgical complications from a tubal ligation.

(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.

Some women don’t find out they’ve been given a husband stitch until they have a gynecological appointment with a new provider,

vasectomies are always performed with at least a local anesthetic, while pain meds are rarely if ever used for IUD insertions.

They believed that cramps were not a public health priority.

When the choice is between maximizing men’s pleasure or minimizing women’s pain, society will predictably choose men.

It doesn’t come up, because a woman’s orgasm isn’t an essential part of learning about the birds and the bees.

In first-time hookups with other women, they orgasm 64 percent of the time. But in first-time hookups with men, they orgasm only 7 percent of the time.

the problem isn’t women’s ability to orgasm. It’s our cultural approach toward heterosexual sex and our focus on men’s pleasure over everything else.

All unwanted pregnancies are caused by irresponsible ejaculations. Or, in simpler terms: Men cause all unwanted pregnancies.

You just put 100 percent of the responsibility on the woman by saying she needs to insist the man use a condom.

Relying on his sexual partner to use birth control is avoiding or relinquishing his responsibility.

If a man can easily prevent unwanted pregnancies by controlling his own actions, but he’s only interested in preventing unwanted pregnancies if women are controlling the actions, it seems like he’s much more interested in controlling women than he is in reducing unwanted pregnancies.

Women are already doing the work of pregnancy prevention. No. If you actually want to reduce abortions, you need to start much earlier. Instead of focusing on abortions, you need to focus on preventing unwanted pregnancies. And to do that, you need to focus on preventing irresponsible ejaculations.

Are you aware of the pressure for women to agree to having sex with no condom in order to not disappoint men, to not displease men, and to not risk lessening the pleasure of men?

In one study, 30 to 35 percent of men admit they would rape if they thought they could get away with it legally.

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.

Men can and do walk out on pregnancies. Women cannot.

Going through pregnancy and childbirth in the United States is nearly 1.5 times as likely to kill you as traffic accidents

The challenges inherent in parenting are so numerous I could fill a thousand pages describing them. These challenges are never acknowledged by those who insist women should simply endure unwanted pregnancies.

“No. No no no no no no no no no! I do way too much for this work already, a six-month-old will break me, destroy my marriage and physical health. I just can’t!!”

Hypocrite

Casual suggestions that women need to become mothers, that women who don’t want to be pregnant just need to deal with having a baby, that lifelong parenting responsibilities are an appropriate “consequence” or “punishment” for a women who had sex are actually bonkers.

About 60 percent of women who have abortions are already parents—so

But also, no child should exist as a punishment! Every child deserves to be wanted and anticipated.

the adoption rate today for people denied abortion is the same as the pre-Roe rate.

We need a curriculum with clear descriptions about the differences in fertility between men and women and the implications these have for preventing unwanted pregnancy.