Perhaps you’ve noticed something new at your local market. Opill, the first oral contraceptive approved by the FDA for over-the-counter use, began shipping to U.S. stores in March. It has no age restrictions and does not require a physician’s sign-off; you can now buy a three-month supply at Walmart or Target the same way you might pick up Tylenol or tampons or a six-pack of seltzer.

This is, without a doubt, a momentous development in the realm of reproductive health. In the post-Dobbs environment, in which access to abortion care has been severely restricted across the United States, easier access to contraceptives is significant. Yet Opill also debuts as more and more women, in public forums and in their physicians’ offices, are raising concerns about the effects of hormonal birth control on their physical and mental well-being—and are pushing back against the idea that pharmaceuticals are their best options for trying to prevent pregnancy.

For the past few years, the “Why women are going off the pill” essay has become a staple of lifestyle journalism. A search for birth control on TikTok yields thousands of videos, many taking a negative stance on hormonal methods. Side effects are a common complaint: mood changes, headaches, irregular bleeding, lower libido—or, in some instances, more dangerous complications, such as blood clots. Many of the critiques note that women’s concerns have a history of being overlooked or dismissed by the medical establishment, and that women are still waiting for an improvement on the birth-control status quo.

[Read: The Coming Birth-Control Revolution]

In many spaces, this upsurge in discussion has been treated not with curiosity, but with contempt. Those airing dissatisfaction, or simply describing potential side effects, have been called antifeminist or accused of threatening other women’s birth-control access. Commentary critical of the pill has been dismissed as misinformation by mainstream news outlets—not always unfairly, as much of the material on social media can’t exactly be called reliable. (“Wellness” figures hawking fertility-awareness “coaching” abound, as do right-wing influencers with barely concealed agendas.)

But at the same time, many people online are recounting real stories of real symptoms, and expressing legitimate qualms about the options they’ve been given. Their distrust is not unfounded. Kate Clancy, a biological anthropologist and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the author of Period: The Real Story of Menstruation, told me that women “are very often subject to medical betrayal—to having really awful experiences in a medical context.” Clancy said she was “glad there’s improved access.” But if you already harbor mistrust, “if you already have reasons to say, ‘Wow, these pharmaceuticals were not really made for me,’ then over time I understand why people arrive at a place where they are dissatisfied with current options.”

This is where the tenor and content of the discourse can be vexing: The public takedowns of skeptical women risk silencing the important conversations people ought to be able to have in service of meeting their health-care needs. If women’s overall betterment is the goal, then narrowly prioritizing access—celebrating a development such as Opill while shouting down the women simply trying to talk about their experiences—is counterproductive. To address reproductive health in full, taking into account questions about rights, responsibilities, and the physical and social ramifications of pharmaceutical solutions, requires a wider lens.

A few years ago, I was prescribed an oral contraceptive after a conversation with my doctor that could most generously be described as extremely brief. In the month I took the pill, I was overtaken by a debilitating brain fog that felt like a loss of self. I was irritable, snappish. I made my living as a professional columnist, yet suddenly I felt bad at writing—not in the sense of the usual scribbler’s procrastination, but in that I genuinely couldn’t generate ideas or string together words. I contemplated leaving my job. I cried a lot.

I realized the cause of this identity shift only after my prescription ran out and my regular personality snapped back into place, seemingly overnight. I hadn’t turned into a failure. Hormonal birth control had derailed me.

The pill is something of a catchall term, used to describe a variety of oral contraceptives that make the uterus inhospitable to pregnancy and often prevent ovulation. “Combination” pills, the most common type—and the kind I was prescribed—contain synthetic estrogen and progestin (a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone); “mini-pills,” of which Opill is one, contain progestin alone. Early versions of oral contraceptives had extremely high doses of both hormones, leading to sometimes severe side effects. Newer versions, with more carefully calibrated doses, have lessened, though not eliminated, those risks.

Today, oral contraceptives are the second-most popular birth-control method for women in the United States, after permanent sterilization. Fourteen percent of girls and women ages 15 to 49 use them, according to a federal survey from 2017 to 2019, the latest data available; nearly one in five American girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are on the pill. Over the decades, several studies have found that many people who start taking the pill will eventually go off it because the side effects are so intolerable. Concerns about side effects are also frequently named as a reason women resist taking their “preferred contraceptive method” in the first place.

It is not a stretch to imagine that young women taking an over-the-counter pill, unmonitored, could be left dealing with symptoms they might not be prepared for—without the recourse or the wherewithal to ask questions, or without the knowledge that what they’re experiencing is worthy of concern. Sarah E. Hill, a psychology professor at Texas Christian University and the author of This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: How the Pill Changes Everything, told me she’s in favor of removing barriers to access and supports Opill coming to market. But “I worry about it,” she said. “For everybody, but I worry about it most intensely for adolescents, whose brains are still developing.” Recent studies have found evidence of an increased risk of depression in some of the youngest users of hormonal birth control, and Hill said it troubles her to think about “young women who are most vulnerable to getting these kinds of side effects going on this medication and not being watched.”

Nearly all medications come with potential negative side effects, and we still use them as tools. You can get liver damage from taking too much Tylenol, but in the right amounts, the drug can lower a worrying fever. And in the case of birth control, of course, any adverse effects must be weighed against the life-changing alternative: becoming pregnant, one of the riskiest undertakings many women will ever experience. Forty-six percent of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, one of the highest rates among wealthy nations, and the rate tends to be highest among low-income populations and younger women. Those are the same populations most likely to take advantage of a pill that has no age restrictions and does not require a visit with a health-care provider for a prescription and subsequent renewals.

My own disturbing experience was, I know, not a universal one (though there is at least one high-quality study, of more than 1 million Danish women and girls, suggesting a linkage between hormonal birth control—especially progestin-only formulations—and higher rates of depression). And some people decide that even significant side effects are worth it when they desperately want to prevent pregnancy and hormonal birth control is the only, or the most readily accessible, option. Here is where Opill could be transformative—imagine a woman being pressured into pregnancy who can now buy birth control without alerting her partner, or a working mother who doesn’t have the time or resources to meet with a prescribing doctor but can walk to the nearest CVS.

But I do wonder: If I had started taking hormonal birth control unsupervised, as a teen or a young adult, would I have spent my entire adulthood believing my personality to be different than it was? What would that have meant for me—and the trajectory of my life?

It would be an understatement to say that women have put up with a lot in the name of reproductive health, including many discomforts and inconveniences that men have refused to endure, and that the conventions of medical research have allowed them to avoid. This is not to say that efforts have not been made to get men to do their part.

Andrea Tone, a medical historian and professor at McGill University, told me that in the 1960s and early ’70s, “activists clamored for a contraceptive pill for men so that they, too, could share its responsibilities and risks.” Clinical trials for male hormonal birth control began as early as the 1970s. But a 2016 study noted that a trial for a hormonal injection was canceled after men reported side effects, including acne and depression—never mind that for decades, women have endured these afflictions and worse.

[Read: New Male Contraceptives Could Be Infuriatingly Pain-Free and Easy]

In a recent Atlantic article, my colleague Katherine J. Wu detailed current research and potential innovations in male-managed birth control, noting that although the list of contraceptive options available to women has lengthened since the introduction of the pill 64 years ago, most of the changes have been incremental, and women are still left to deal with a wide variety of side effects and inconveniences. In contrast, the medical system seems to bend over backward to ensure male users are comfortable: Experts have said they doubt that the side effects typical of the female contraceptives on the market would be deemed acceptable by evaluators of the clinical trials of male birth-control methods.

Easier access to the pill eliminates real barriers. But in a medical industry that has long centered male comfort when it comes to reproductive health, an undue burden will always be placed on the people capable of becoming pregnant. As Tone put it, “Making pill-based hormonal contraception available OTC normalizes birth control as a female responsibility and, possibly, even an expectation.”

That expectation may very well continue to serve as an excuse for overprescribing, for overlooking women’s concerns, and for failing to hold accountable a health-care system that has historically not served women well. Ease of access is “a really good thing,” Clancy, the University of Illinois professor, told me. “But there are things in addition to contraception we need to be doing to improve the lives of people who can get pregnant, like broader social infrastructure to improve their care.” Instead, she said, “we just choose to kick the can down to the microsolution and make it about individuals making decisions.”

This is where the knee-jerk pushback to discussion of hormonal birth control’s potential downsides becomes harmful. To support individuals, we need more conversation, not less. It should be possible to celebrate increased access to birth control and to validate women’s negative experiences. It should be possible to praise Opill and to push back against the unfair assumption that women must bear the material and physical costs of contraception.

In a 2023 survey of people assigned female at birth, conducted by the reproductive-justice nonprofit Power to Decide, almost a quarter of respondents ages 15 to 19 said that they lacked sufficient information to decide which birth-control method was right for them—a gap that speaks to a larger problem with the American approach to reproductive health. In an ideal world, the health-care providers I spoke with told me, doctors would spend more time with patients, health literacy would be higher, and reproductive responsibility would be shared between women and men. To create such a world would require not only a cultural shift but also a remaking of the American way of providing care—a not-impossible task, but a much heavier lift than selling a pill.           

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Researchers have been hard at work on a number of male contraceptives, some of which could hit the market in the next couple of decades. Options include a hormone-free birth-control pill, an injection that accomplishes the same thing as a vasectomy but is easily reversible, and a topical gel men can rub on their shoulders with little in the way of side effects. There is a recurring theme in the research on male contraceptives: easy, convenient, minimal side effects.

“From the get-go, the researchers involved in developing male contraception have paid extra- close attention to: Can we develop products for which there will be almost no side effects? And can we be extra vigilant about this, so that these products are going to be basically the most convenient, easy things ever, with almost zero risks?” says staff writer Katie Wu, our guest on this week’s Radio Atlantic. In fact, one trial was halted in 2011 because a safety committee decided the risks outweighed the benefits. The side effects included mood swings and depression, which, if you are a woman who has ever been on any form of hormonal birth control, will definitely shift your mood.

What changes in a future in which male contraceptives are readily available, and a routine part of men’s health care? For one thing, the dreamy nature of these options might inspire researchers to innovate on women’s options as well. But a lot of cultural conversations could also shift: around whose job is it to be vigilant about pregnancy, who can have sex without consequences, and what we think of as traditionally masculine.

Listen to the conversation here:

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The following is a transcript of the episode:

Katherine J. Wu: ​It’s intuitive to think, you know, you need two people to conceive a child. And currently—

Hanna Rosin: Wait, what?

Wu: [Laughs.] And currently our contraception options are almost entirely limited to one biological sex: people with ovaries and a uterus.

[Music]

Rosin: That’s Atlantic staff writer Katie Wu—and when she puts it like that, yes, the math is so obvious. It takes two to make a baby. And yet when I say “birth control,” we mostly think of one: the one with the ovaries and the uterus.

I mean sure: condoms, vasectomies. But the whole complicated apparatus of birth control—decades of hormones and doctors’ appointments and implants and worry, the costs—that’s something mostly women have to deal with.

But of course it doesn’t have to be that way. Why didn’t I realize that sooner?

I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. And today—the rapidly advancing science of male birth control.

As a science and health reporter, Katie’s followed this research for years. When we spoke, I was curious—maybe even hopeful—to see if the impetus for the research was to ease the burden on women. Here’s Katie.

Wu: There’s a couple motivations, like certainly just having a little bit more equity in this whole world of family planning. If there are two people participating in the conception of a child, if the goal is to actually prevent that, why shouldn’t multiple parties participate? It would certainly ease the burden on women, who are the primary people having to deal with the logistics of contraception, the side effects of contraception, paying for contraception, accessing contraception—even stigma around certain contraception, especially in parts of the world where contraception is not necessarily widely socially accepted.

But also to this idea that tackling something from two different vantage points— sperm and egg—is going to make the whole endeavor a little bit more successful, right? Combining two methods of contraception: that’s not a bad way to go about it if you really want to be sure that you are accomplishing your goal.

Rosin: That’s interesting. And the scientists say this? Like, the scientists working on this say, Yes, we’re doing this partly for equity reasons?

Wu: Oh, absolutely. I think there is this growing feeling that the burden of contraception, preventing pregnancy, and taking on the risks of doing that has really fallen unfairly on women. And it’s time that we spread that around a little bit more. There are actually male participants in trials for some of these birth-control methods—for male contraception—who say part of the reason that they want to participate is they watch their female partners go through the side effects and the hassle of taking birth control, and they feel guilty, they feel frustrated, they feel like, Why can’t I be doing more to help out?

Rosin: I’m a little speechless and a little…I don’t know, I’m just heartened to hear that. It never occurred to me—maybe I’m just too cynical—but I’ve been so accustomed to thinking of birth control in the current political context that it just never occurred to me that in science there was this decades-long effort to make this whole process more equitable. It’s really nice to hear.

Wu: It is, though of course I have to jump in here with a little bit of cynicism, right? It certainly has not been perfect culturally. And I think, as encouraging as it is to hear that a pretty decent contingent of people do feel this way, of course there’s been pushback on that idea—and there’s certainly reasons why it has taken so long to get to the point where we’re on the cusp of having widely available male contraception beyond condoms and vasectomies.

Some of those reasons are definitely scientific, right? We’re dealing with a totally different reproductive system. But I think we also do have to acknowledge that people are just a lot cagier about asking men to take on extra risks, extra burden, when the viewpoint has been for decades: “We don’t have to. The women have that covered.”

Rosin: Yeah. Okay. I really want to get into that, but before we do, let’s just have some basic understanding. What are the methods people are looking at? Like, what can we expect in our local pharmacy in the men’s contraception section soon, in our near future? What is it? What are they?

Wu: Yeah, so I will caveat this to say that not all of the things I’m about to mention will necessarily be on pharmacy shelves. Some of them will have to be maybe sort of roughly akin to having an IUD placed. It will require you to go to a doctor’s office.

But there are a bunch of different options. Probably the one that is furthest along is this topical gel that has been in trials for several years now, that men can basically smear on their shoulders. And it’s this hormonal concoction that really, really dramatically plummets their sperm counts.

And if they apply it regularly, it’s a pretty great and almost side-effect-free way to control their own fertility—and totally reversible.

Rosin: Wait. That sounds comically easy. Like, you put basically like a gel on your shoulders, and it has no side effects?

Wu: Okay, it doesn’t have zero side effects, but I certainly am comparing this to a baseline of like, the typical side effects we see with female birth control. Mood swings and depression.

There is almost none of that that is being reported in trials. Men actually sometimes experience increased libido, and the investigators have been really surprised to see like, Oh, you know, there’s really not much going on here in terms of the typical side effects we see with female birth control.

Rosin: Mm hmm. Why is this irritating me? Okay. You know what—

Wu: Oh, we’ll get to it. I promise.

Rosin: Okay. All right. So keep going. What are some of the other methods?

Wu: Yeah, so another that I think is super interesting is what I sort of liken to a really easy, reversible vasectomy. So, you know, traditional vasectomy: You have this quick surgery where you go in and you’re messing with the vas deferens, which is the conveyor belt for sperm.

That is a surgery, but this new method that researchers are experimenting with, they’re basically plugging up a tube with a gel that can either dissolve or be removed at a later date. So that, you know, it’s pretty easy placement—it’s just plugging a hole, like a stopper to a sink that you can remove.

Basically capitalize on the convenience of having sperm so readily accessible, like right there in the testes, which hang outside the body. A lot harder to reach eggs that are hiding out in ovaries: deep in the abdominal cavity sometimes.

Rosin: Wait, you’re saying it’s easier? Like, biologically, the male contraception is an easier proposition?

Wu: Certain parts of it are. Others aren’t. As you can imagine, some of the more challenging things is there are so many sperm being produced constantly, and so many sperm in, you know, every attempt at conception that it can be hard to get them all. But on the flipside of that, we only have to reduce sperm counts to a certain degree, not to zero, to make someone effectively infertile, even if only temporarily.

Rosin: Right. Okay. I’m seeing a theme here, which is: quick and easy.

Wu: Absolutely. And I think about the diversity of options. I mean, I’ve only named two, but we’ve already covered something that is super long-acting and reversible—the set-it-and-forget-it kind of method. One is hormonal. One is non-hormonal. And there are others still that could be a pill that you may only have to take occasionally, rather than every day, to, like, stop your sperm from being motile.

Rosin: And how plausible are these things? Definitely a train that’s coming into our station? Like, this is definitely going to happen at some point?

Wu: I think some of these methods are far enough along—probably that topical cream, especially—that, you know, researchers, even ones who aren’t directly involved with the trials, are pretty optimistic that, yeah, maybe sometime in the 2030s, this will really become a reality.

I think even just having a couple options for men on the market will be a big step toward equity. But there are also some kind of frustrating things about how exactly that’s going to manifest.

Rosin: What do you mean? Why?

Wu: Oh, right. So I think we have both noticed, as I’ve been talking through these options with you, that these sound pretty great. Obviously some unexpected hurdles could arise, some unexpected side effects could still crop up, but so far it really is looking like we’re fast approaching a reality in which men are going to have easy access to super-convenient, super-effective birth control that hardly gives them any side effects at all.

While in the meantime, millions of women are like: Oh no, I have terrible acne again, or I have extreme pain because my IUD is doing weird stuff to my body. And that just seems like we could be doing better.

And I mean, this is not an accident. And I think that is one of the most frustrating parts of this. From the get-go, the researchers involved in developing male contraception have paid extra-close attention to: Can we develop products for which there will be almost no side effects? And can we be extra vigilant about this, so that these products are going to be basically the most convenient, easy things ever, with almost zero risks?

Rosin: Okay, now I’m speechlessly infuriated. So, okay, just to summarize: You’re just saying that what’s on the table, what they’ve been very vigilant about, is: Let’s make sure this is easy. Like, it doesn’t have side effects, and it’s easy. And they didn’t really worry about that too much with women.

Now, what I was hoping you would say is that, scientifically, it’s just too difficult, too hard to devise birth control for women that is that free and easy. But you’re not saying that. You’re just saying it just wasn’t a priority—we don’t know if it’s easy or doable.

Wu: Absolutely there have been different sets of standards for men and women. And the argument for this, over the years, has been one that—depending on who you are and how you feel about a bunch of different things—you may find reasonable or not. This idea that, yeah, it’s the woman who gets pregnant, the woman who must bear, literally, the risk of pregnancy.

And so, she has more to lose if the contraception doesn’t work. And so she should be willing to take on more risks with contraception that she takes, because she’s weighing that against the risk of pregnancy. For men, you’re taking contraception inevitably to prevent pregnancy in someone else.

And so, it’s not: Am I going to get this headache? versus—become pregnant.

It’s: Am I going to get this headache? versus—nothing.

Rosin: Right; the incentives have to be extra strong. Like, it has to be extra easy to get men to play along with this.

Wu: Yeah, I think it’s both a marketability thing, but they also do have to contend with these kind of independent safety boards. And those safety boards have certainly been stricter about saying, “Well, if we really are doing the risk-benefit calculation of every step along this clinical trial, we’re going to do the math a little bit differently, because we know what the risks are in Scenario 1 and the risks are in Scenario 2.”

And so, like, it’s kind of funny, because there have been trials for male contraception in the past that were paused by these independent safety boards because they were thinking, Oh my God, the math is not working out. The risks to men are so great. And meanwhile, participants in the trial that was paused were actually like, “Actually, I would have kept going with this if you’d let me,” so… [Laughs.]

Rosin: Wait, but were those a question of safety? Or what was the challenge there?

Wu: Right. So this was a trial that was stopped in 2011. Basically, this independent safety committee determined that the drug side effects outweighed the potential benefits. But the side effects were mainly mood swings and depression.

They were experiencing side effects that I would certainly say a lot of women go through with their own birth control—even nowadays with our updated methods.

I will freely admit that I was pretty frustrated when I learned about this. At the same time—and maybe this is the cynical part of my brain speaking up—it didn’t shock me.

I think, at face value, this illustrates the double standard that is absolutely still going on with birth control. And at the same time, it also is almost sickly validating. Because for anyone who is sitting here wondering Why don’t we have these options yet?: This is it. This can help to explain a lot, and I think this illustrates what has to be overcome.

Rosin: So we’re edging toward the scientific breakthroughs, but it sounds like we still have cultural barriers to overcome: notions about masculinity, responsibility, promiscuity—all that. After the break.

[Music]

Rosin: Alright, we’re back. Katie, we’ve been talking about equalizing this burden between men and women. What gets in the way of that? In the past, what’s stopped that from happening?

Wu: I think we struggle to reconcile some of the common side effects we associate with birth control with our modern conceptions of masculinity. Is it especially not okay for a dude to take a drug and have his sex drive go down? To undergo mood swings and get really emotional? To break out with acne in his 30s? We have, for whatever reason, socialized that to be normal and acceptable for women, but this is not a norm that we’ve been taught to accept for men. And I think there may be an additional struggle there.

Also, certainly anyone who has a problem with female contraception right now in today’s world is going to have some concerns about male contraception and, you know, the implications of that for promiscuity. How we think about sex for the purpose of, you know, not conceiving, but just having sex.

I mean, God, I would love to see people re-conceptualize this as like, “Who’s allowed to have a sex drive?” Right? We’ve been so cagey about men losing their sex drive for x, y, and z reasons, to the point that this is a prominent concern in trials for male contraception. If that can help inspire more enlightened thinking about how important it is for women to maintain a sex drive—and for them to even have a sex drive to begin with, and for that to be culturally okay—that would be fantastic.

Rosin: Yeah. Hear, hear. Okay. So, we understand now that the pill was a massive cultural revolution. We can see that now. From everything you’re saying, there is a possibility that we’re on the brink of another moment like that.

Like, there could be—maybe you’re laughing inside—but, could we, if male contraception, if they figure out how to message it correctly, if it starts to show up slowly and then be accepted in the mainstream, is there a possibility that it helps build a sense of genuine shared risk and responsibility for sex and having a baby?

Wu: I hope so. I mean, I certainly see this future playing out in gradients rather than a switch being flipped. And any step in the direction of more equity I will take it. I do fully anticipate that there is going to be pushback against male birth control. I mean, there already is. I think if you go into the darker corners of the internet, you will see that people are freaking out about the fact that these trials are even happening, and like—“Why bother? The women already have it fixed.” Blah, blah, blah, blah. You can imagine the sorts of things that people are already saying.

Rosin: Because why? Because it destroys masculinity? Like, I don’t actually know what the cultural, even if it’s the dark cultural resistance…

Wu: I will admit it’s hard for me to get into this space, as someone who has never felt this way. And I also, I am not a man. But I do think there are some concerns about masculinity. The production of a lot of sperm is very tied up in traditional notions of masculinity, and this is something that would directly imperil that. I also think there is just a lot of pushback against the newness of the notion that contraception should be a shared risk.

For people who think that box was checked long ago by products being made available for women, this seems like an unnecessary additional risk for huge swaths of men to be taking on.

Rosin: Got it. Right. Now, among the scientists, do you get the sense that the future they see is a possible replacement for the pill in lots of quarters? Because I can imagine a situation where: A couple sits down, they’re looking at a male contraception that has virtually no side effects. Most female contraceptives have some side effects—some very significant side effects. And they would choose the male contraceptive.

Wu: Yeah, it’s a great question. And opinions about this are a little divided. I think a lot of researchers are curious to see what is going to happen. I can see on an individual-to-individual basis how, for a lot of couples where the woman has really struggled with the side effects of birth control, or not wanting to go through somewhat invasive procedures to have longer-acting methods placed.

There are many good reasons to not be excited about women’s contraception right now. There may be a scenario in which male birth control replaces female birth control within those couples. But I also have heard from a lot of people that they don’t expect overall-population or community-wide enthusiasm for female contraception to really diminish all that much.

There are going to be a lot of couples who want to team up and use multiple methods at once. You know, why not? That will that much more decrease the chances of pregnancy.

It’s almost like using both an IUD and a condom, but splitting that even more equitably between men and women at this point.

And then I think this is a slightly more cynical reason, but there are going to be plenty of women who don’t trust their male partners to fully take on the responsibility, even if that does become pharmaceutically an option.

Is the male partner in the scenario going to apply that cream regularly enough?

Rosin: Right. Like, it definitely opens up the question of shared responsibility. It doesn’t necessarily explode it, so that we’re all of a sudden living in a different world. But I do feel like it inches closer. And I am thinking about what changes in society if we start to think of preventing the birth of the child as also the responsibility of a man. We kind of vaguely do now—like a condom, very vaguely. But when a man has many, many options, it becomes harder to duck, you know?

Wu: Right.

Rosin: It shifts the burden of vigilance.

Wu: I would hope so. I’m sure there will still be a lot of lingering sentiment that women’s contraception should be the biggest safety net here, because unfortunately some men will continue to see this as a still very low-stakes endeavor for themselves. But we’ll see. I think another thing that I am excited about that could shift things culturally, and just make all of this feel easier for women in a kind of indirect way, is maybe this could inspire female contraception to be less riddled with side effects, to be more convenient, you know, to take some inspiration from the male side of things.

Why can’t we revamp female contraception at the same time?

Not just by saying, “Hey, there are more options for your partner to take,” but “There are also better options for you to take, too.”

Rosin: So, just to end here: An equitable world for you, given where you know the science is going and what’s possible, what would it look like?

Wu: Well, it would certainly go beyond contraception. Probably.

Rosin: We can go there if you want. I was mostly thinking about like, let’s limit it to the pharmacy aisle. Like, if we’re talking about contraception, and I’m going to a doctor or walking down the aisle, what is equitable?

Wu: I mean, I think there are a lot of ways to imagine how that future would be different. Certainly pharmacy shelves would look different. But also would we have, you know, a revolution in medicine? Would we train a huge contingent of doctors to be a larger counterpart to what we currently see as the realm of OBGYNs?

And, you know, would those conversations start to happen with men? Would we, like, regularly check in with men about their sperm counts, their fertility, how they’re participating in their partner’s health? That sort of thing.

And I would certainly hope that there would be expanded thinking about how to access these options. Like, how are we going to think about who is able to access them, how insurance is going to cover them? You know, what is going to require a prescription versus what can just be grabbed off the counter.

If there’s going to be a huge disparity in the methods that are available, can we at least think about, like, making several options freely accessible to men and several options being freely accessible to women, so that it’s not creating or reinforcing the sort of gender disparity that we’ve been talking about?

There are just so many things. And like, gosh, even how sex ed is taught in schools. That could really start to change young people’s minds about gender and sexual freedom and just the culture around all of this, from really early.

Rosin: Oh, wow. Okay. I hadn’t thought of this. You’re blowing my mind now. So basically what you’re talking about is all of the complications and variations and the whole idiom we’re used to around women’s health. That same equivalent starts to develop for men—not just male contraception, but at every step.

Like they’re taught in schools. Not just “wear a condom” but that it’s their responsibility to take contraceptions, and how contraceptions affect them. They talk to the doctors about what the contraception will do to them. You know, they talk to their partners, and on and on. And that’s where you get a sense of equal investment, price paid and joy, in the whole process of family planning.

Wu: Totally. And I think what’s fascinating about this is: You can even think about the tale of these interventions being different for men and women. Women go through menopause. Men don’t. You know, there’s a universe in which men and women, young men and women, maybe start to think about contraception, use contraception around the same time. But maybe because men might end up using it for several more decades than women in this utopian future that we’re imagining, you know, maybe that actually helps push things, again, in the direction of, “Yeah, this is actually something that should really be a normal, natural, sustained part of how we envision male health, and what it means to be a man alive for multiple decades in this world.”

Rosin: Wow. Yes. Okay. My thinking on this has been so limited, and you’ve just thoroughly expanded it. So thank you so much for that.

Wu: Happy to help.

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Rosin: This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend, edited by Claudine Ebeid, and engineered by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I’m Hanna Rosin. Thank you for listening.