It’s Long Been Women’s Responsibility. That Might Finally Be Shifting.

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Of all the sexually active women I know who use long-term contraception, nearly every single one has a horror story. I have multiple friends who have become deeply depressed while on the birth control pill. Some get debilitating headaches, or nausea, or deal with emotionally numbness, side effects that can be frustratingly difficult to even get straight answers about. My friends with IUDs describe their insertion procedures with a faraway look in their eyes, like they’ve seen war. I myself have cried on the table as two gynecologists wrestled to open my cervix for 20 minutes. I’ve never experienced so much physical pain in my life. I was offered an ibuprofen. (It was only a few weeks ago that new guidelines were issued that finally asked doctors to take this pain seriously.)

The onus for birth control has long fallen on women, who have more than a dozen contraceptive options to choose between, but basically always have some kind of downside. Men, meanwhile, continue to be limited to two options: wear a condom or get a vasectomy. Three if you count pulling out. The idea of developing more male contraceptive methods has been tossed around for decades. But getting these methods approved is challenging because, unlike for women, where birth control’s side effects are safer than the health risks that come with a pregnancy, a man would be taking on side effects without reducing any of his own health risks. When the Food and Drug Administration decides to approve or reject a drug, they consider the risks and benefits to the individual taking the drug. So either a new male contraceptive needs to have no side effects (can we work on that for women too, please?), or there needs to be a new framework altogether: that a person would willingly take on their own health risks to reduce a partner’s health risks.

Recent research shows that it’s an idea that men are increasingly open to. Last year, a multicountry study asked more than 15,000 sexually active heterosexual cisgender males about their interest and willingness to use a novel form of birth control, such as a pill, gel, or injection, a couple of which are possibly five to 10 years out from being available. The findings showed high interest across the board (the study was funded by the Male Contraceptive Initiative, so perhaps it makes sense that the results were rosy). In the U.S., 78 percent of men said they’d be willing to try a new male contraceptive—and that was one of the lowest numbers. In Vietnam, 98 percent of men were open to it. Many men were willing to try it within the first year of availability, including over three-quarters of survey respondents in Nigeria and Bangladesh.

Of course, this doesn’t mean these men would definitely go on to use birth control—it’s one thing to be open to it, and a very other one to actually accept the inconvenience, risks, costs, and discomfort associated with taking a new medication. But the burgeoning abortion restrictions in the U.S. have shed some light on why men might desire their own new contraceptive methods. The survey found that, before the Dobbs decision, 39 percent of American men would be willing to try a new contraceptive in its first year of availability. The year after, that number rose to 49 percent. That makes sense: Men might not have to deal with the health risks of pregnancy, but they are on the hook, at the very least financially, for a baby.

We’re seeing that increased interest in contraception play out already, as more and more men are considering vasectomies in the post-Dobbs era. One study found that, in the week after the Dobbs decision, vasectomy Google searches increased sevenfold. (Searches for female birth control also increased.) And the inquiries translated into action, according to a review of insurance claims data: Vasectomies increased by roughly 20 percent in the seven months post-Dobbs relative to the seven months prior. This was seen even in states that voted to preserve abortion rights; one study found a 160 percent increase in vasectomy procedures in Michigan in the six months after Dobbs. Perhaps most notably, there is a rising interest in vasectomy rates for men who are usually less likely to seek them: men who are young and/or who have no children.

Men taking on more responsibility in the birth control world doesn’t mean that women can finally take a breather, especially given that the rise in interest is happening as abortion access is dramatically decreasing, making getting accidentally pregnant all the riskier a prospect. While surveys have shown that many women trust their partners to take contraceptives responsibly, at least half of female partners stated that they would want to continue to take their own contraceptive regardless of what the men were doing. It’s unlikely that the responsibility of birth control will ever totally shift from a woman’s burden to a man’s. But sharing the responsibility? Hopefully someday it will be a no-brainer.