A non-hormonal, reversible and non-toxic male birth control could be a step closer, with scientists successfully targeting a protein that's crucial in making fertile sperm. Knocking this protein out for a period of time would give men control over their protection window, much like oral…
What do you mean by always? The birth control makes sense because it’s much harder to do it for men because sperm is constantly being produced and women only release 1 egg per month. What other ways do women have to mess up their bodies?
Oh, wow, do you come off as uninformed! Birth control for women has tons and tons of side effects, and it’s in no way easier to prevent successful ovulation than it is to prevent fertile sperm production. In fact, birth control drugs for men have been repeatedly blocked by regulators for having too many side effects, while those side effects pretty closely mirror those of the pill for women. So, interfering with everything from blood pressure to appetite is acceptable when women are affected, but can’t be burdened upon men?
Interrupting the ovulation cycle comes at great cost for the body. All the “non-hormonal” ways of birth control we have (except the condom) require either poisonous metals and foreign objects to be pushed inside the uterus, increasing the risk for cysts, causing pain, and regular checkups and painful procedures to be applied or fitted (diaphragm). Or toxins to be applied straight into a woman’s private parts (spermicides). Calendar-based methods and “pulling out” have large margins of error, as have condoms.
Do the copper IEDs have negative side effects? I thought the objection to those was purely moral.
Edit: I meant IUD lol
My wife got repeated infections and had a lot of pain from the copper iud.
If you go looking for testimonials you’ll find numerous people who had bad experiences with it.
Also, they really should offer anesthetic or at least a powerful painkiller for the insertion and removal procedures. Doctors act like it’s no big deal, but it’s very painful.
Yet another case of the medical industry not caring one iota about women and women’s ability to identify what is going on with their own bodies. The number of times I’ve heard of doctors dismissing women’s pain and issues makes me want to scream.
Yep.
Firstly: Disregarding the discomfort of having to see the doctor and having something shoved inside your body is a weird mistake, especially men tend to make regularly when talking about those things. Having your genitals exposed to and then painfully tampered with by what is ultimately a stranger isn’t a thing most people would describe as a pleasant afternoon activity.
The side effects aren’t just from hormones. Imagine having to do a prostate exam every 6 months and a metal plug shoved close to your prostate through your urethra every few years (not the same, of course, just an attempt at an analogy, since men are one hole short down there). Wouldn’t you dislike that? Many women are really sensitive around their cervix and implanting the IUD can therefore be really painful.
Secondly: Period cramps increase in severity, bleeding increases for most people, and there are hints that those IUDs can increase the risk for cysts, which in turn cause issues, pain and sometimes need surgical removal.
The two women I dated that had an implanted IUD legit didn’t have a period anymore. So not only was the bleeding and cramps not worse, they simply didn’t exist.
You honestly seem to just trying to be pushing some agenda, possibly because you had a bad experience and you’re assuming that’s just the way it is for everyone, when the reality is it’s pretty rare.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/iud/iud-side-effects
Periods going away or getting lighter is a side affect of hormonal IUDs. Copper IUDs have no mechanism to make them go away, and seem to pretty commonly make cramps and bleeding worse. .
IEDs have very negative effects, but you wouldn’t really call them side-effects.
And IUDs involve surgery which has its own risks including perforating the uterus, plus they can become infected and cause sepsis which is deadly, plus in general infections suck. Some women suffer immense pain which may or may not be ignored by their doctors. They also do release hormones which have fewer side effects because they’re more local, but they’re not side effect free.
Many of these issues were much worse in the earlier days, where many women died or suffered serious illness and permanent infertility whilst doctors didn’t take them seriously because women are often ignored by doctors where men would not be. So the level of safety the devices now have was bought with a lot of women’s unnecessary suffering.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/iud-risks-and-complications-906766
I know it has many side effects. My girfriend suffered many of them when she was taking the pill and I had to beg her to stop because it just was not worth it.
And fuck off of course it’s easier to stop ovulation than sperm production. It’s a numbers game. Also not like I fucking made hormonal birth control. What we have now is bad and you can go ahead and find a better alternative with less side effects. That does not mean the new birth control should also have side effects. Take issue with the people that approved the current ones.
A “numbers game”? Do you think there are little men in your balls, strangulating every sperm cell when it’s formed? Or… do you think the pill works by somehow interfering with the ovum itself?
Because it doesn’t. Quite the opposite. Just as male contraception methods don’t try to kill sperm, but to shut down the factory. Besides: You cannot measure the difficulty or complexity of medical procedures by how many cells are affected. By that logic, brain surgery would be way easier to do than amputating a leg.
What I meant is that it’s easier to ensure it works being a numbers game. If you constantly have new sperm being made it’s way harder to shut that down consistently than to stop one egg releasing once per month.
That’s not how any of this works. Did you never take reproductive anatomy?
No. Where would I take that?
In school. But I’m sure you could gather the essentials from the internet.
We had sex ed but we never went really deep.
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Woah there, you shouldn’t berate someone, belittling them for being “too young” and then act like a child in the supermarket when they didn’t get the Matchbox Car they wanted. Jeez!
Haha you’re right, usually i avoid the youth angle. But his comments smelled so youthful the words came out on their own. only the young get mad at the insult so i think in moderation it’s a good tool
Honestly, as glad as this article makes me, I’d still like to see a perfect birth control for women. Periods seem like they must be the worst part of being a woman (biologically, not socially). Having a temporary, reversible way to stop ovulation without fucking up a dozen related systems and causing physical and mental anguish would be nice.
This is a really dumb take. The onus of birth control should not be only on the women.
Condoms are a thing
Condoms don’t work for everyone’s body.
Edit: to be clear I’m saying it’s not that simple. There should be more options for anyone with a penis to be able to handle this important implication of having sex. For anyone in general, more options are always good.
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I know you’re joking but there are size restrictions on condoms in the US where I live, so no they don’t.
Edit: also, body shaming is gross.
Calling someone dumb isn’t a good way to start a discussion. When men wear condoms how can you claim the onus is on women? My wife didn’t want to take hormones so I wore condoms, every couple has that option.
I didn’t call them dumb, I called the statement a really dumb take, not the same thing.
Forgetting about pregnancy and childbirth perhaps? I take it that they meant those things fuck up women’s bodies pretty severely sometimes. It’s a tough struggle to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, and some never do.
But apart from that, birth control should be an equal burden, IMO.