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.

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

So, it’s accurate to say that a woman’s egg is only fertile for 24 hours every month. But in reality, to avoid a pregnancy, sperm needs to be kept away from an egg for the woman’s 24-hour fertility window, plus five days beforehand. To be extra safe, doctors recommend keeping sperm away from eggs for seven days before the 24-hour fertility window.

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.

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.

We’ve put the burden 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.

When men choose to have condom-less sex, they are putting a woman’s body, health, social status, job, economic status, relationships, and even her life, at risk in order to experience a few minutes of slightly more pleasure.

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.

Men carry, abort, suffer complications from, labor, deliver, and die from 0 percent of unwanted pregnancies. Men can and do walk out on pregnancies. Women cannot.

The most effective, proven way to reduce abortions that we know of is free and accessible birth control.

We know that in countries where birth control is affordable or free and more easily available to anyone who wants it, there are much lower rates of unwanted pregnancy. In fact, currently, the rate of unwanted pregnancy in the United States is 21 percent higher than the average in other Western countries.

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.