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Male Birth Control Pill to Stop Sperm Production Passes Safety Test
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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Female birth control has to be safer and have fewer side effects than pregnancy.
Male birth control has to be safer and have fewer side effects than letting women carry the burden of birth control.
There will not be a male birth control pill. We would be better off putting these resources toward improving the safety of female birth control.
more options are always good for edge cases.
some women can't take birth control pills, and the other birth control options have downsides as well.
nothing is 100% effective, so if you want to be even more sure that you won't make babies, both pertners being sterlized is extra security.
some men would like to be sterile but are hesitant to have a vasectomy done. They are generally simple but they don't always go well.
for younger single men in casual encounters, you can never be sure of the other's birth control status. I'm sure there are men who would like the option to be in control of their sperm.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be male hormonal birth control, it’s just that after 40 years of the same story over and over, it seems the effort should be redirected. Vasalgel has been “in development” since the 70s. It’s not getting any closer.
Meanwhile, the US still only has one size of non hormonal IUD available, and two sizes of hormonal. They don’t fit most nulliparous women comfortably. This is a very fixable problem. 50 years of R&D could have solved this.
I mean, I don’t think this is such a high bar to pass.
Pregnancy is bad but I’d argue the consequences of 18 years of unwilling parenthood far outstrips the consequences of 9 months of pregnancy. The consequences for those 18 years impact both parties.
Furthermore, men have almost zero agency of what happens in the case of an unintended pregnancy. A man can’t say, “this would ruin my life, I am going to choose not to have the baby.”
That makes the risk quite high for a man, IMO, and the only way to take agency over that risk is male birth control.
At first read that came off as callous, but I see your point. I had that thought as well regarding improving female birth control. Where's the research into a hormone-free pill for women?
It is a bit callous. I’m old enough to have seen this pop up a dozen or so times.
Every time the depression, weight gain, acne and libido changes are deemed too severe for approval and women are sitting here like… yeah, it’s all that plus increased occurrence of stroke and heart attack for us, but ok.
I actually interpreted it as callous to the suffering women endure at first read for some reason. But yeah, there's very much an element of, "The stakes are higher for women, so they can deal with the side effects," which is awful.
Callous or not, it's hard to justify trials ethically for that reason. Yes, it would be better for society as a whole, even if it could potentially be worse for an individual; but is it ethically right to burn up an individual for the sake of society? And now if you'll excuse me, I have to walk away from Omelas.
Edit: Pre-empting a question: Yes, I walk. I recognize that the trolley would be quicker.
This first phase study shows no side effect.
It seems you are underestimating the value for men to not be responsible for unwanted babies and to have more control of their own contraception.
Except there are many women who would like to get pregnant and trap the sperm doner into child support. I think many men would love to be in charge of their futures. Condoms can fail or be sabotaged.
Edit: Downvote me all you want but in the name of equality there should be options for males to take if they want to give their female partners the choice not to take anything. Not saying women don't deserve better options but there should be options for males too.