Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion

by Gabrielle Stanley Blair

My key claim is that 99 percent of abortions are the result of unwanted pregnancies, and men cause all unwanted pregnancies.

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.

A man’s sperm is fertile every single second of every single day. And though we know his sperm gets crappier as he ages, a man can produce sperm until the day he dies.

Ovulation is involuntary. Ejaculation is voluntary.

we shouldn’t forget that using birth control is a responsibility—and often a burden.

Most women aren’t actually told much about the risks of birth control, and if they do experience side effects, they are just expected to live with them. 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.

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.

Men have two options for birth control: condoms and vasectomies. Both are easier, cheaper, more convenient, and safer than birth control options for women.

Is this asking too much? We expect women to use their birth control perfectly, to remember to take the Pill daily, to keep up with doctor’s appointments and prescriptions. Why shouldn’t we expect men to use their birth control methods perfectly as well?

On June 25, 2022, a designer who goes by @studio lemaine tweeted: “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.”

It’s not just that it’s riskier than a vasectomy. Tubal ligations are routinely denied to women who are under thirty-five or who don’t have kids. And not for the reasons outlined above, but because we have a paternalistic medical system that believes women aren’t capable of making decisions about their own bodies. In fact, though it’s not a legal requirement, it’s also not uncommon for a doctor to require a woman to get the signature of her husband before they are willing to perform a tubal ligation.

We don’t even notice that women pay the costs of birth control, even though it benefits both men and women. In fact, I’ve never met a woman who charges her boyfriend for half the costs of the doctor’s appointments, transportation, and prescription refills required of her to handle pregnancy prevention.

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. Even though birth control options for men have a long list of distinct advantages, we’ve put the burden of pregnancy prevention on women. 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.

here’s the thing, 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.

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.

It is astounding and disheartening to say it, but our current culture doesn’t actually expect men to be responsible for preventing pregnancy. Our current culture doesn’t even expect men to provide their own condoms.

Here’s the thing, if you’re someone who is interested in reducing abortions, as strange as it sounds, focusing on abortions is not the answer. Neither is focusing on women. 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.

We need to focus on men and stopping irresponsible ejaculations. Everything else—reducing unwanted pregnancies, reducing abortions—follows from this critical focus.

I’m not taking responsibility away from women, I’m just reminding men of theirs.

If you think I should be holding women more accountable for preventing pregnancy, then you’re in luck: Women are already held accountable for preventing pregnancy. Women already do the vast majority of the work of pregnancy prevention. The burden of birth control, the effects of birth control, and the consequences of failed birth control are essentially entirely on women. 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. Consider this for yourself. 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?

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.

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. I think it’s safe to say that if sex were as risky for men as it is for women—with an unwanted pregnancy potentially leading to loss of social status, loss of career, a disruption of their education, physical disability, death, and the permanent responsibility for another human—that men would insist on having a choice in the matter.

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.