Since 2007, September 26 has been celebrated as the World Contraception Day, every year. With the objective to raise awareness about family planning, contraception, healthy reproductive choices, WHO had come up with this initiative. It has been observed that whenever the word contraception is heard, people associate it with women more than men.
Right to contraceptives is a women’s right as much as men’s. However, when it comes to birth control, the onus to carry the responsibility is more shifted to women.
It’s high time that society explores contraceptive methods for men, and involves them more in this process.
As the world celebrates World Contraception Day, come, let’s get to know more about this. Why do we need to have male contraceptives?
There are around 11 contraceptive options for women to choose from. Some of the contraceptives include oral contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices or IUDs, and injectable contraceptives.
While there are long-acting, reversible contraceptives (LARCs) for women, there have hardly been any changes in the male contraception. So far, the only 2 contraceptive methods available to men are condoms and vasectomy. Neither of these options are hormonal methods or LARCs.
It is about time that we move towards contraceptives for men. We need to reconceptualise the responsibility for contraception, after all.
To begin with, this imbalance between the number and types of options available for men and women is quite troublesome.
Inadvertently, this difference leads to a compulsion for women to carry the weight entirely on their shoulders. In other words, it puts women in a position to bear financial, health-related, and other burdens of contraception.
Women’s contraceptive methods are way more expensive than men’s; and many insurance plans refrain from covering contraception.
Basically male’s reproductive autonomy is decreased by giving increased responsibility for contraception to females.
Moreover, besides being costlier, women contraceptives have greater side effects than men’s contraceptives.
Another reason that men should have other contraceptive options, condom’s failure rate is quite high (16%). So, it makes men depend more on their partners for contraception.
Last but not the least, there are a whole lot of significant issues, too, that crop up besides the health and economical aspects for females. Women need to invest a lot of time and energy to gather contraception knowledge, undergo invasive procedures, stress, worries, and encounter the social backlashes (moral reproach) as well.
Contraception should be viewed as a shared responsibility. It’s a social justice that must be meted out.
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