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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.
At eighty years old, a woman who menstruated for forty years will have experienced 480 days of fertility. At eighty years old, a man who hit puberty at age twelve will have experienced 24,208 days of fertility. So let’s do the math. 24,208 divided by 480 . . . carry the 4 . . . and it turns out that compared to women, men have a little more than fifty times the number of fertile days.
Men don’t play a minor or supporting role in pregnancy. Men’s lifelong continual fertility is the central driving force behind all unwanted pregnancies.
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.
Women cannot control when they are fertile. Women cannot choose when ovulation begins or ends. Women cannot control the movement of their egg. During sex, women cannot remove their egg from their body and place it in someone else’s body. If sperm are nearby and the egg is fertile, the egg will activate and interact with the sperm, helping them penetrate the egg surface, but until then, the egg stays where it is and waits. It does not leave the body in search of a substance that can impregnate it.
Ovulation and implantation are involuntary processes. Ovulation happens whether or not there is sex. Ovulation happens approximately monthly without resulting in pregnancy. Ovulation only leads to pregnancy when a man chooses to ejaculate and add his sperm. Sperm fertilize. Eggs are fertilized. Ovulation is involuntary. Ejaculation is voluntary.
vaccine, which was paused for ten days when a risk of blood clots was discovered. Six people out of the seven million who had received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine developed serious blood clots. One of them died. At the time, it was scary to read the headlines, though the risk of blood clot from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is less than one in a million. In contrast, the common forms of women’s birth control come with a much higher risk of blood clots—oral contraceptives triple the risk of blood clots. According to the FDA, the risk of birth control users developing a serious blood clot is
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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.
Apparently, the seven-day break and its fake “period” was designed into the Pill as an “attempt to persuade the Pope to accept the new form of contraception as an extension of the natural menstrual cycle.” This attempt did not succeed, and the current Pope continues to forbid contraception in most cases. But the seven-day “break” is still a part of the Pill, and this unnecessary complication increases the chances for mistakes—mistakes that increase the risk of unwanted pregnancy. A great reminder that most everything about birth control is overly complicated and difficult, and men in power are
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Birth control options for men are very effective plus vastly easier, safer, more convenient, more accessible, and more affordable than birth control options for women. Given this, the expectation ought to be that a man uses a condom every time he has sex. And if a man is deeply condom-averse, it should be an absolute given that he would get a vasectomy.
When learning that 78 percent statistic, a responsible man would not respond: Well, the Pull-Out Method isn’t effective enough, so I won’t bother. But rather: I’d better learn what mistakes to avoid with the Pull-Out Method. This is serious business. I can’t mess around with someone else’s life like that. Part of my becoming an adult means I need to know how to pull out effectively and to do everything I can, like using condoms or considering a vasectomy, to make sure it doesn’t come to that in the first place. Is this asking too much? We expect women to use their birth control perfectly, to
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Tubal ligations, aka tubals, aka “getting your tubes tied”—where the woman’s fallopian tubes are tied off, cut, clamped, banded, sealed off with an electric current, or blocked—are often compared to men’s vasectomies. This is understandable, because they are both considered permanent forms of birth control. But in practice and lived experience, vasectomies are easier and less risky.
Dr. Alexander Pastuszak of the University of Utah Medical Center says: With tubal ligation you need to make an actual hole in the abdomen, which by surgical standards is a minor surgery, but it’s still much more major than a vasectomy. I don’t see any reason why a tubal ligation would be or should be preferred over a vasectomy.
Of the dozens of contraceptive products, approximately 90 percent of them are created for women, purchased by women, and used by women. That includes women purchasing more than 30 percent of male condoms.
You might think women would be angry at men about all this. But mostly, we’re not. We’ve been raised in the same culture as men. 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’ve taught those same lessons to others.
The most serious side effects for the men was that one participant became depressed and another suicidal. Which I agree is very serious. But side effects for women’s birth control options are just as serious, if not more so—yet millions of women are still prescribed these drugs and ingest them daily. That story perfectly captures an unspoken cultural maxim: We don’t mind if women suffer, as long as it makes things easier for men.
vasectomies are always performed with at least a local anesthetic, while pain meds are rarely if ever used for IUD insertions. Let me say that again: these two procedures—one for men, and one for women—are both invasive and both involve very sensitive body parts. It’s expected that the procedure will be painful for men, so pain relief is always administered. For women, it’s expected that if it is painful, the women will just endure it, and pain relief is almost never administered.
A surprising number of people, as I discovered while trying to determine if my own acute suffering post IUD-insertion was abnormal, describe it as the worst pain they’ve experienced in their life. The worst of it is blinding and minutes long, and then about 75 percent of that pain goes on for hours. And that’s if nothing goes wrong, like the device jams, and the doctor has to try again a second time.
In subsequent tests for the same drug, sildenafil citrate, they discovered that it also offered significant and lasting relief for women suffering from serious period pain. That same team of decision-makers, all of whom were men, decided against pursuing research on menstrual cramp relief. Why? They believed that cramps were not a public health priority.
This little snippet of medical history is a variation on the maxim I mentioned above: When the choice is between maximizing men’s pleasure or minimizing women’s pain, society will predictably choose men.
It’s both misogynistic and bizarre that it is considered completely normal to perform invasive gynecological procedures with no pain management.
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.
Would men really choose a few moments of slightly more pleasure over risking a woman’s whole life? Yes. Yes they would. It happens every day. It’s as common as dandelions. We could say men are extremely inconsiderate, but I think it’s more a matter of: 1) men not understanding or not appreciating what this actually means for women, 2) a culture that reinforces this ignorance, and 3) the all-too-human mandate to maximize pleasure, even at the disregard of possible consequences.
When masturbating, 95 percent of women orgasm. 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.
Why are we talking about unwanted pregnancies? Because 99 percent of abortions are the direct result of unwanted pregnancy. And we need to understand very clearly that women enjoying sex does not cause unwanted pregnancies and abortion. What causes unwanted pregnancies and abortion? Men enjoying sex and having irresponsible ejaculations.
No matter what a woman “lets” a man do, she can’t (legally) make a man ejaculate inside of her. When he does, that’s 100 percent his doing. We know this is true because if she “let” him put his penis in a waffle iron, he wouldn’t. If someone tells you to do an irresponsible thing, and you choose to do that irresponsible thing, that’s on you.
If a woman doesn’t make the request—let’s pretend she’s preoccupied and forgets to ask—does that mean the man is off the hook? She didn’t bring it up so therefore he doesn’t need to wear a condom? He doesn’t need to be responsible for his own bodily fluids? Of course he does.
Perhaps you are thinking responsibility is fifty-fifty. The woman just needs to insist that the man use a condom. But hold up a minute. If the woman has to insist a man use a condom, haven’t you just described an irresponsible man? How is that fifty-fifty? You just put 100 percent of the responsibility on the woman by saying she needs to insist the man use a condom. You’re asking the woman to be responsible for her actions and also for the man’s actions.
If you have a son, his sperm can “infect” any woman he has sex with. As parents, as a culture, we need to emphasize how carefully sperm needs to be handled. Pregnancy and childbirth are known to kill women. Pregnancy and childbirth are highly likely to leave permanent scars and cause future health problems, including possible future infertility. Unplanned pregnancy and childbirth can have a significant negative impact on the quality of life for the future child and their parents. A man’s sperm can cause a huge amount of damage.
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.
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.
I’m not taking responsibility away from women, I’m just reminding men of theirs. Holding men accountable for their actions does not make women victims. Asking men to take some responsibility is not the same as allowing women to take no responsibility.
Surely, if you felt that my mere suggestion that men cause all unwanted pregnancies is unfair, wouldn’t you feel the same discomfort at the very true reality that women do almost all the work of pregnancy prevention? Isn’t that just as unfair?
In North America, one in four women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. In one study, 30 to 35 percent of men admit they would rape if they thought they could get away with it legally. In a poll of 22,000 women in Britain, 51 percent responded that they had woken to a partner having sex with them or performing sex acts on them. For many young women, violence has even become an expected part of consensual sex—if women aren’t willing to be choked or slapped or otherwise hurt, they are labeled “vanilla” and rejected.
Murder is the leading cause of death for pregnant women, often committed by the man who impregnated them. If that doesn’t underscore the power dynamic in sexual relationships, I don’t know what will.
Don’t ask: Why don’t women pick better men? Instead, ask: Why are there so many abusive men? And: Why don’t we teach men not to abuse?
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.
If you look at it closely, the process of pregnancy and childbirth is quite horrifying. Two things can be true at once: Pregnancy and childbirth are mind-blowingly glorious and miraculous, AND they’re some of the most dangerous and damaging things a body can experience.
A pregnant body may experience symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD), also called pelvic girdle pain (PGP). This is caused when the hormones that allow your pelvis to pull apart during birth are released too early, and it can make it very difficult to walk.
When you push a human out of your body and tear the muscles and skin in your genitals, the postpartum pain management begins and ends with popping an ibuprofen (but not too many, because you don’t want to poison your breast milk).
Going through pregnancy and childbirth in the United States is nearly 1.5 times as likely to kill you as traffic accidents (there are 17.4 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies each year, and 11.7 deaths per 100,000 people from driving each year).
For each woman who dies, up to 70 suffer hemorrhages, organ failure, or other significant complications. That’s approximately 49,000 to 63,000 people each year.
Men famously can’t handle the pain when connected to a menstrual cramp simulator. Men wouldn’t accept the side effects from a male birth control pill. Yet men expect women to experience pregnancies that routinely maim them and can even kill them.
When discussing pregnancy and childbirth, it’s good to remember that 1) it’s easy to trivialize the risks you want others to take—risks that you won’t be experiencing yourself, and 2) because pregnancy and childbirth are so common, it’s easy to brush them off as a minor nine-month inconvenience (topped off with a bit of pushing), when they are so much more.
Even in two-parent households, 70 percent of women report that they are fully or mostly responsible for housework, and 66 percent report they are fully or mostly responsible for childcare (I couldn’t find a percentage for the mental/ emotional work of managing a family, but feel free to estimate). Additionally, a huge number of women are the sole providers for their children—according to the Pew Research Center, mothers are the sole or primary provider in 40 percent of households with children.
Relinquishment is not just traumatic for the mother. There’s a growing body of research showing that it means lifelong trauma for the child as well.
So, many men keep going along, causing unwanted pregnancies with irresponsible ejaculations and never giving it a thought. When the topic of abortion comes up, they might think: Abortion makes me uncomfortable. Women should not choose abortion. And they never once consider the man who caused the unwanted pregnancy.
Colorado created a program that made birth control free and easily accessible. The result? Abortion rates fell by almost half. And not just Colorado—St. Louis had a similar program with great results. As a bonus, these programs can save millions of dollars. The health department in Colorado reported that every dollar spent on that birth control initiative saved $5.85 for Colorado’s Medicaid program.
The biggest reason for the low numbers in The Netherlands is that the country mandates comprehensive sex education for all students. Kids receive age-appropriate sex ed in every grade. The information they receive is medically accurate, and they can ask questions and get honest responses. That’s not how sex education works in the United States, where every state can take a different approach.
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.
