A Male Birth Control Pill Could Be Around The Corner

In its National College Health Assessment last Fall, the American College Health Association found that about 46% of sexually active college students in the U.S. said they or their partner were on the pill to prevent pregnancy. But despite this still widespread use among college students, the pill is not the symbol of freedom it was once assumed to be; many young people are beginning to speak out more about experiencing side effects like nausea, headaches, or sore breasts after taking it.

The landscape of contraception options, however, could change following the last meeting of the American Chemical Society in March, when a team of American scientists announced the creation of a new male birth control pill that is 99% effective in mice. Trials on humans could start this year, and the pill could be commercialized in the next five years, according to Professor Gunda Georg, who worked on the project. As a result, reproductive justice activists on college campuses see the possibility of male birth control as an important but imperfect step toward facilitating reproductive justice among young people.

Millie Hernandez, a member of Princeton Students for Reproductive Justice, told the FBomb she sees the possibility of male birth control as not only a “great step towards having different methods of contraception available,” but “also in terms of having options, which I think it is mostly about.”

Molly Baker, the co-president of the campus group Boston University Students for Reproductive Freedom, told the FBomb that the possibility of accessing a male birth control pill could help facilitate a greater understanding of reproductive justice — which Baker defines as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities,” and is rooted in SisterSong’s definition — on college campuses by “giving men the ability to understand how hard it can be to be on birth control.”

Reproductive justice activist, podcaster, and first-year student majoring in social and cultural analysis at New York University, Aarna Dixit, agrees. “Pregnancy has always been [something] that women have had to worry about,” Dixit said. To her, this asymmetrical responsibility that goes with family planning comes from a “bigger systemic issue, because for a long time sexual health has been targeted towards women.” Issues like birth control and reproductive justice “are seen as a woman’s issue, but it’s a human issue,” she added.

Even though a male birth control pill would address this issue of imbalanced responsibility, Hernandez added that potential users would still encounter “immediate barriers of entry” that exist for other contraception methods, like scheduling an initial appointment with a doctor and concerns about insurance coverage. These factors are “a big part of the decision for a lot of people,” and with condoms already available and easily accessible, those extra steps might prevent the male birth control pill from being widely used on campuses, Hernandez added.

Even if a male birth control pill helps people question the social norms of responsibility in family planning, activists argue that far more still needs to be done to facilitate reproductive justice for all — particularly in light of increasing abortion restrictions across the U.S.

“I think we need a lot of legislative work done,” Dixit said. “Education is super important, but right now, let’s just save Roe v. Wade. We need [the pill]. But we need more. Because we need it to be intersectional, we need it to be about access.”

And in this quest for choice and access, Baker said that education and information must go along with technological progress.

“[First-year students] come to us, and they realize that there’s a lot more to learn and a lot more intersections of reproductive justice than they previously talked about in class, in their clubs, or with their friends,” Baker said.

In club meetings, members witness the discrepancies based on the large variety of students’ experiences, she added. Limitations in the access to knowledge about what contraception methods exist, which one can be best suited for your needs, where to find it, and how to access it can make a big difference in students’ experiences with contraception, according to Baker.

“I just think it’s really hard to get people on board, to make them understand consent, contraception, and healthy sexual relationships,” Baker said. “So I don’t really know how [male birth control pills] would actually work, but I think people would be interested.”