For more than sixty years, women have been taking hormonal birth control. Today, sixty-two percent of women in the United States take some method of birth control, the most popular being the pill. Although it is known that birth control is often likely to cause unbearable side effects such as depression, nausea, and weight gain, women still continue to take these contraceptives.
Recently, a study discovered that new hormonal male birth control injections are almost as effective as various forms of birth control for women. This is great news for women because it shifts the responsibility to take preventative measures for pregnancy onto both men and women.
However, all good things must come to an end. This clinical trial was soon halted due to twenty of the male subjects dropping out because of severe side effects like depression, decreased libido, and acne – side effects women have been dealing with for over sixty years.
Why, then, are men excused from these consequences due to hormonal birth control methods while women are not?
While the pill was still being tested on women in the 1950s and 60s, those who were part of that study reported side effects much worse than the ones men experienced during this recent study. The study was tested on women in Puerto Rico, often without their consent, because birth control was illegal in many states at the time. Once these women, who were not informed of the insufferable reactions to the medication, dropped out of the research, the scientists leading the study began to use incarcerated women.
The FDA and pharmaceutical companies eventually allowed hormonal birth control to be available to women in the United States, conveniently forgetting to mention the negative side effects caused by this form of contraceptive.
A major study was conducted this year for the first time ever investigating these side effects of birth control, because 60 years of complaining by women is apparently long enough.
The termination of the clinical trial for male birth control means that women have not been taken seriously in the world of medicine for more than sixty years. Scientists and doctors have been ignoring women’s complaints because women are too emotional and tend to exaggerate things.
Yet these side effects women have been experiencing are far from exaggerations and need to be addressed immediately. The pharmaceutical industry is a sexist entity that has been treating women as less than human. We should not be punished by these consequences of birth control just because we do not want to become accidentally pregnant. And we should not punish men for being “weak.”
Women have the ability to make good decisions in their best interest. It’s time for the world to realize that. We can only hope that our needs will be taken seriously from now on.