Male Birth Control: At Last, Men Won't Have to Endure Pain of Childbirth

Acording to an article in Scientific American, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Population Council is initiating a study involving 420 couples from the U.S., Kenya, Sweden, Italy, the U.K. and elsewhere to test a newly developed male contraceptive product. It contains medicine that can be rubbed onto the body that will supposedly provide birth control. It is the second try at this. An earlier study made by the World Health Organization with a different product, administered by shot, had unexpected side effects and so had to be halted.

Surely, this is very good news for men. If this works out, men will be able to make their own decisions about whether they want to go through with the struggles of pregnancy, the pain of birth and all that raising a child entails. This will give men the control over their bodies, which, up until now, they have never had. And no stretch marks!

There are some who say that interfering with the natural order of things is not the way to go, that this will result in many fewer pregnancies than now, which will translate to fewer adults in the future to fight our wars, run our economies or invent new things to do. It could also lead to rampant sex if men now know that before sex, if they take this medicine, they will not have to deal with a pregnancy and all its consequences, some of which consist of caring for a younger individual for the rest of your life.

Until now, almost the whole focus has been on women and their birth control problems. There are contraceptives they can wear in private places, there are birth control pills, there’s Plan B, the morning after pill, which will make up for any mistake you might have made the night before. And it’s also about freedom.

This is America. We say hooray for men. Hooray for this new development in medicine, which is long in coming, since women have had the equivalent of this for quite some time now.

What took you so long?