Cis-men’s Perspectives on Male Birth Control

Birth control promised to curb growing human populations while liberating women individually and socially. Instead, these technologies reinforce a feedback loop associating only women’s bodies with family-planning responsibilities. As a result, many diverse female contraceptives have reached markets while few male contraceptives have. Cis-men’s attitudes are commonly offered as explanation for why novel male contraceptives have not reached markets at the same pace, but little research has investigated this. I address this gap through thematic analysis of focus group interviews exploring cis-men’s attitudes on existing and novel male contraceptives. Focus group findings suggest cis-men experience less urgency to contracept due to differences in physiological burdens of pregnancy and childbirth. Decreased urgency does not mean that cis-men are uninterested in contracepting or in novel contraception options, but that cis-men express boundaries to what they will endure when contracepting. Knowing men’s articulated boundaries can help male contraceptive research and development (R&D) efforts moving forward. Additionally, these findings call into question current clinical risk assessment systems wherein risk of the medication is compared to how the individual experiences (unintended) pregnancy in a purely physical sense. Lastly, these data crucially demonstrate cis-men’s interest in contracepting and having a complete clinical risk assessment system for developing, novel male contraceptives is still not enough. Systemic changes must occur for male contraceptive technologies to be accessible and utilized by cis-male populations. Because interviews were conducted before the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision that overturned federal abortion protections, I expanded my research to include a follow-up survey gauging how participants’ attitudes from the focus groups were impacted, if at all. The follow-up survey demonstrated increased urgency for novel male contraceptives as a result of the Dobbs decision, for example, can increase cis-men’s urgency/interest in trying the interventions regardless of their lack of familiarity with the method or its potential side effects. Follow-up survey findings also demonstrate how cis-men’s urgency/interest for novel male contraceptives is highly influenced by the current socio-political context surrounding reproductive justice issues. This finding affirms that the focus group data finding that the current FDA (Food and Drug Administration) clinical risk assessment is incomplete.