The pill is a HUGE inconvenience. It beats a surprise pregnancy, but let’s be real: Remembering to take it at the same time every day and dealing with the hormonal side effects can be tough.
So what if there were a non-hormonal birth control that your partner could take instead of you? The Daily Beast reports that an oral contraceptive for men looks promising in the early stages of research.
By early stages, we mean early stages. It’s still only been tested on mice, but the results have been exciting. Mice were given two drugs that block a single protein in sperm, making the sperm less flexible and unable to fertilize an egg. This method doesn’t target hormones the way women’s contraceptives do, and was reversible in mice—They became fertile again one week after stopping the treatment.
LiveScience reports that studies involving one of the drugs in humans have had mixed results for pregnancy, so we shouldn’t throw away our pill packs just yet. But with each study, we’re getting closer and closer to the day when it won’t just be a woman’s responsibility to keep herself from getting pregnant. That’s something to celebrate.