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.

This enormous disparity in fertility is important to recognize at the outset. I’m not trying to overdramatize this—it’s a simple fact of biology. But it points to the reality that men and women are not two equally matched parties when it comes to fertility and potential to cause a pregnancy. One party is more fertile by orders of magnitude.

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.

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.

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.”

Perhaps the problem isn’t condoms but the way we talk about condoms. Or, more accurately the way we don’t talk about condoms—if a man believes sex without condoms is a conquest, he’s not likely to talk about the benefits of condoms with other men he knows.

The reigning assumption is that if a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, then she’ll do whatever it takes to prevent a pregnancy from happening. After all, it’s women’s bodies that are stuck dealing with the pregnancy.

The thing is, the Husband Stitch doesn’t actually make a vagina tighter. The man who requests the stitch or is happy about the stitch may get satisfaction from the idea that his partner’s vagina is “tighter,” but he won’t actually feel a difference. His psychological satisfaction is prioritized over the women’s physical pain.

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.

What causes unwanted pregnancies and abortion? Men enjoying sex and having irresponsible ejaculations.

I sense you still want to argue about this, so let’s try another scenario. A woman and a man agree to have sex without a condom (conveniently for this scenario, he’s among the majority of men who don’t have sperm in their precum). He puts his penis in her vagina, starts his best moves, and shortly after, she has an orgasm, but he hasn’t yet. As soon as her orgasm is finished, she stops and says “Thanks so much for the sex!” then gets dressed and leaves. Though they had sex, and though her egg was present, and though she had an orgasm, the women wasn’t impregnated and could not be impregnated. The women successfully had unprotected sex with no risk of pregnancy because her male partner didn’t ejaculate. Unprotected sex without sperm will not lead to pregnancy.

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.

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.

Asking men to take some responsibility is not the same as allowing women to take no responsibility.

Do you think people should cover their mouth and nose when they sneeze so they don’t spray germs everywhere, but you don’t think you need to worry about where your sperm ends up?

Pregnancy is risky and dangerous. We can’t have a meaningful discussion of unwanted pregnancy, or abortion, without acknowledging this fact.

One recurring argument leveled by people who are antiabortion is that pregnancy is the punishment for a woman who has sex for fun instead of for reproduction. The concern is that if she’s impregnated and then has an abortion, she’s “getting off scot-free.”

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