Should Men Be Responsible for Birth Control? (Episode 404)

Full Transcript: Episode 404

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack

Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the Fertility Awareness Method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of the Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I teach women’s health professionals how to utilize the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices and I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know I’m a busy girl but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today.

Today we are jumping back into my birth control series. If you remember at the very beginning of the year, I started off the year with a birth control series because I really love talking about using fertility awareness for birth control. So I felt that the reality series episodes, most of them were specifically oriented on birth control. So I do feel like they still fell with the theme, although in Shalom’s call, she is obviously trying to conceive. But at the same time, I really wanted to kind of jump in and I have two great episodes for you to share today. Today’s episode and then also next week are the final installments of the birth control series for this year.

And so today I’m sharing one of my favorite episodes and I know I say that a lot but I really love talking about using fertility awareness for birth control and really supporting my clients and listeners to help you be successful using this method as birth control. So this episode, if I remember correctly, was a response to a thread on Twitter and essentially the topic was, should men be responsible for birth control? And I always find this topic to be so interesting because I feel like the response and it’s logical and reasonable to this question is kind of like, well, we all should be 50% responsible like I should take 50% responsibility and he should take 50% responsibility and that makes logical sense but of course I have to go throw a wrench into that because I actually argue that if you’re in a relationship and you are actively avoiding pregnancy then what would it look like if you took 100% responsibility and he took 100% responsibility. So okay, it’s not about math, but it’s more about a concept because one fantastic argument that should be made is that men are the ones that are fertile all the time. So as a woman with a menstrual cycle, there’s only a short window of time each cycle where pregnancy is possible for me. And ultimately all pregnancies are caused by sperm. And there’s a lot to be said for that whole concept of wrap it up or pull it out. So it actually is possible for men to take full responsibility of their ejaculations. And if they are in a relationship and they don’t want to have a baby at this time, that it literally all unplanned pregnancies or, you know, the vast majority could be prevented if men simply just stopped ejaculating inside of their partners when they know full well that they’re not trying to have a baby.

So I know it’s controversial, but I still think it’s worthwhile just to have, just to kind of like follow this thought to where it goes and think about it. What if we lived in a world where men from young were expected to take full responsibility for their ejaculations? What if we lived in a world where literally if he was not wanting to get you pregnant that he would not ejaculate inside of your body? He would either wear a condom or withdraw or do something so that he is not contributing to this problem of unplanned pregnancies. And then on the women’s side, what I think is interesting is that it does typically fall on us. So when it comes to pregnancy prevention, we are usually the ones basically footing the whole bill, whether that is using hormonal contraceptives, whether it’s having an IUD inserted or, you know, implant or, you know, using the patch or the ring or all the other options, or even as it pertains to fertility awareness, we’re the ones investing time, money, and energy into learning how to chart our cycles. And there’s nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, as a woman, I’m the one that has to deal with it if I become pregnant. So it does make sense that I should take responsibility for my own fertility and to understand how my cycle works and or otherwise figure out the birth control. But does it also make sense for him to take full responsibility?

So anyways, this was kind of a long preamble, but you can tell I’m all fired up about this topic because I do think it’s really interesting. And whether you agree with my assessment or not, I still think it’s interesting to just kind of follow down that trail of thought and see where it goes and kind of pose those questions like what if we lived in a world where men literally took full responsibility for their contribution to this whole unplanned pregnancy issue. So with that said, let’s jump into today’s episode.

I have a special episode for you today. Today, I wanted to jump in and weigh in on, I suppose that’s kind of like a mini controversy, but it’s related to last week’s episode with Nicole Jardim. So if you didn’t tune into last week’s episode, it’s definitely one to listen to. We jumped in and just hashed out controversy in different areas from dietary guidelines to women’s rights in terms of healthcare and also abortion. And today I wanted to just zone in on that article that we talked about in our previous episode. An article came out within the last couple months called my Twitter thread on abortion. And it went viral. So basically, there’s a woman who is Mormon with six kids, and she decided to weigh in and share her perspective on abortion and what she thinks would be necessary to stop abortions. And it’s a different take than a lot of us are used to. And it went viral because it goes directly against a lot of the messages that we’ve heard about pregnancy and who’s responsible for pregnancy because in our culture, the burden of pregnancy obviously falls on women because we are the ones who get pregnant, we are the ones that carry the babies. There’s no way around that. But with that also comes the burden of preventing pregnancy. And so as women, we are the ones who disproportionately take on the burden of preventing pregnancy.

And from a fertility awareness educator standpoint, it’s very interesting when you learn about the menstrual cycle and you learn that there’s such a small window of fertility. So as women, you know, our window of fertility from a scientific perspective is six days. So the reason for that is because we produce cervical mucus as we approach ovulation and our mucus can keep the sperm alive for up to five days. So when you take a look at the research, three to five days is really the maximum when you look at the actual studies of, you know, how long sperm resides in cervical mucus. And so that means you can have sex up to five days prior to ovulation and if you have cervical mucus on those days, the sperm will still be alive, you know, or at least it can still be alive up to five days afterwards. And then the fertile window ends with the day of ovulation. So the five days that your mucus can keep sperm alive plus the one day of ovulation equals six days. So from a scientific standpoint, there are only six days of the cycle where pregnancy is possible.

Of course, when you’re using the method for birth control, you have to add on a buffer at the end, and we do have to be cautious and look at all of the pre-ovulatory days of cervical mucus as fertile, because you can conceive. If you have sex on any day of cervical mucus, the cervical mucus can keep sperm alive for up to five days, and because you can’t predict ovulation ahead of time, we have to consider those days fertile. But all of those details aside, what it means for women is that out of a typical cycle, so the average cycle falls around 29 days, and out of those 29 days there’s about a week or so when pregnancy is possible from sex, and outside of that period that would leave about three weeks where it’s not.

And what’s interesting from the fertility awareness standpoint is that even though, you know, it’s really men that are the ones who are fertile all the time. So men produce sperm every single day. And so, you know, when men ejaculate, there’s always sperm in there if you’re talking about a healthy man of reproductive age. And so from that standpoint, it’s very interesting that the bulk, the majority of the responsibility for pregnancy falls on to women.

So in today’s episode I wanted to just dive in and share my take on this very controversial article that came across because there’s part of me that wonders, you know, how could it possibly be so controversial? So the heart of the controversy is that the woman who wrote this article and kind of took to Twitter to share her perspective on unwanted pregnancies or unplanned pregnancies, she’s basically putting everything in the men’s court. So I’m just going to read a part of it and then I’ll link the article or you could literally Google my Twitter thread on abortion. I know some of you are doing that right now to find it if you haven’t read it.

And so it’s interesting because I know that this article, for some women they’re like yeah and then for other women they’re like absolutely not, this is completely ridiculous and so that’s why I’m talking about it because it just it really does incite a lot of different reactions in anybody really who reads it. Okay so I’ll just read through a little bit. So at the very beginning she says, today I tried something new. I wrote a Twitter thread for the first time. It’s about abortion and how I think we need to approach the topic differently. So that’s how she jumps in. I’m not going to read the whole thing. It’s really long. I’m just going to take a couple of pieces just to give you a sense of basically what she’s saying.

I’m a mother of six and a Mormon. I have a good understanding of arguments surrounding abortion religious and otherwise. I’ve been listening to men grandstand about women’s reproductive rights, and I’m convinced men actually have zero interest in stopping abortion. Here’s why. Obviously, she dives right into the controversy. She continues, if you want to stop abortion, you need to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and men are 100% responsible for unwanted pregnancies. No for real they are. Perhaps you’re thinking, it takes two, and yes it does for intentional pregnancies. She continues, but all unwanted pregnancies are caused by the irresponsible ejaculations of men. Period. Don’t believe me. Let me walk you through it.

So basically what she’s saying, the heart of her argument is that women are only fertile for a short window of time each cycle. Conversely, men are fertile 100% of the time and so whenever men ejaculate there are sperm in the ejaculate, assuming that we’re talking about a healthy man. I know that there’s a global sperm issue but in today’s episode, we’re not really going into that. And so from that perspective then, what she’s saying from her perspective is that in order for pregnancy to happen, you have to have a man ejaculating inside of a woman. And so she essentially refers to that as the irresponsible ejaculations of men. And what was interesting for me, the first time I read this article, essentially, it was the first time that I’ve ever heard the argument reversed. And I think for a lot of people, this is the first time that you’re actually reading a perspective of somebody actually outright saying, you know, all pregnancies are 100% men’s fault, it’s completely their responsibility, all pregnancies are caused essentially in her words by the irresponsible ejaculations of men.

And what’s interesting about that is how much, I suppose, resistance there is to that statement. This is essentially what I’m going to break down for you today. Now, I just want to preface this conversation by saying that I don’t fully share her opinions. I don’t agree with everything that she’s saying, but I do think that she brings up a really interesting point that we should be talking about, which is obviously why I’m doing this episode today.

And in many ways, although she calls it my Twitter thread on abortion, the issue that she’s getting at is essentially this responsibility and targeting the fact that for the entire span of human history, women have been the ones who had to take the load of pregnancy prevention because ultimately we’re the ones that end up carrying babies. And as a woman, of course, I do take full responsibility for my chance of getting pregnant. And so from the moment I was sexually active as a young woman to this moment right now, I have always taken 100% of the responsibility for pregnancy because ultimately, if I get pregnant, I’m the one that has to deal with all of the fallout in many ways. So I’m the one that has to carry the baby. I’m the one that has to make the decision if this is right for me.

I suppose what I will be sharing and the way I’m looking at it, which might be a little bit different to the way that a lot of people are attacking this, is I guess I have a radical thought. And that radical thought is what if women took 100% of the responsibility for pregnancy, and men did too. So what if as a woman, you know, because we typically do, so what if we took 100% of that responsibility, and men also took 100% of the responsibility. What if all men had a different outlook on it? You know, what if we acknowledge that pregnancy does happen when men ejaculate inside of women. And what if as a man, or men in general, what if our culture was different and that we actually held men accountable? And with that said, what if we acknowledged, okay, so if men ejaculate inside of women, then that’s going to be, you know, pregnancy could result. So, you know, one of the simplest ways to then work towards preventing pregnancy would be to either use a condom or withdraw, meaning that, you know, as a man, what if it was just a cultural thing for men to take 100% of responsibility of their part in it?

And that doesn’t mean — I’m not saying it’s exclusive. So what I find interesting about the comments and the arguments, which I’m actually going to read to you, some of the different arguments about it — I posted about this and it was really, really interesting. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of spirited discussion around it. And when I was kind of looking through it, I really got the sense of it’s like we think it’s either or. So it’s like if we say that men have to be responsible for their role in pregnancy, then somehow it means women don’t. And it’s almost as though there’s two people, but only one person has to take responsibility. So we have to figure out which one of those two people it is. And of course, as women, we’re the ones who have to carry the babies. So we are the ones that have to take responsibility. But my radical suggestion is what if it was just normal in our culture for both parties to take full responsibility.

So what if as a man, you fully just went into it thinking, I’m going to take full responsibility. I know that if I ejaculate inside of a woman and we haven’t specifically said that we’re trying to have a baby, we haven’t specifically said that this is what we’re going to do, and I know that if I ejaculate inside of a woman then there’s a chance of her getting pregnant, what if it was just a cultural thing for men to just not do that? You know, what if the only time that it was acceptable to actually ejaculate inside of a woman was when you were explicitly trying to get pregnant?

So I just want you to think about that for a minute, because it’s very, very different to the culture that we live in. And there’s several reasons that I believe that to be true, and so we’re going to go through some of those reasons today. But I just want to kind of preface this discussion by sharing that because it’s a very different conversation. So essentially, it’s just a question because obviously our culture isn’t there yet. But what if we just had a different expectation of men and women?

So as women, we’re naturally going to try to figure out ways to, you know, avoid pregnancy, which leads us into the discussion of hormonal birth control, because, you know, the vast majority of women are using hormonal birth control to avoid pregnancy because, again, the responsibility falls on us. But anyone who’s listened to the podcast for any period of time, you know that there’s a lot of consequences that come out of using the pill. The pill is associated with a lot of different side effects that can be extremely detrimental. You know, it can range from annoying to extremely detrimental. And as women, we’re so willing to jump into that because of course the responsibility for preventing pregnancy comes onto us.

And it doesn’t take long if you’re having this type of conversation with women for it to come up that for a lot of women, their partners don’t like to use condoms or they’re not willing to do anything. And ultimately there are some women in relationships where it literally does fall on them because their partners are not willing to modify their behavior in any way. And so the ejaculation is going to happen, it’s going to happen inside of her body, so it’s up to her to find a way to prevent herself from getting pregnant. And so what if our culture was different and the expectation of men was different, and what if it was actually looked down upon to just take that for granted in that way?

So I’m actually going to read some of the responses. So one woman says, I too find this argument ridiculous. So a woman should be able to have unlimited sex and pleasure, however, and with whomever she wants, but it’s not remotely her fault if she gets pregnant. So what I think is interesting about that comment, again, there’s this inherent assumption that if there’s two people involved, it’s really up to one person to deal with it. And the thought that if we’re calling out men in this way, in a way that’s really never been done, for someone to come out and say like, all pregnancies, all unwanted pregnancies are the result of irresponsible ejaculations — like that’s super controversial to say, but it’s really interesting because there’s some truth in that.

Now for me, one of the reasons that this argument really incites some interesting responses in myself personally is that my entire reproductive life — so going back the entire time basically that I’ve been an adult and that I’ve been sexually active — I have never been on birth control for that period of time. When I was on birth control, I was a teenager and that was before I actually became sexually active. So as an adult woman, I have never been on hormonal birth control in an intimate relationship. And so what that has meant for me throughout my life is that there was never a time ever, ever, ever when a man could ejaculate inside of my body and it wasn’t explicitly planned and organized ahead of time. I have been, you know, I was always charting my cycles. And so when it comes to a woman who isn’t on birth control and is charting her cycles, the only time that you can have unprotected sex, the only time that your partner can actually ejaculate inside of your body is when it has been authorized, because it can only happen at certain times of your cycle.

And so my personal experience, and I think that informs my perspective on this article and that’s why I wanted to share it because I know my perspective is different. For a lot of women, you’ve never — a lot of women have only had sex potentially when birth control was involved and potentially not had that understanding of the menstrual cycle. In my case, there’s just no taking for granted. You can’t just use my body that way and expect there’s no consequences. So for a woman to stand up and say, okay, all pregnancies are a result of irresponsible ejaculation — there’s a part of me that’s like, well, yeah, because how could you assume that you could just ejaculate inside of a woman whenever you want and there could be no consequences?

So in my opinion, then, the way that our culture looks at women’s bodies and also looks at men’s responsibility has been largely shaped by hormonal birth control. And so with the first pill coming on the market in 1960, and so as I’m recording this, that’s about, you know, almost 60 years, the pill has been out. And the pill changes a woman’s body. So it changes her receptivity to sperm. So basically it makes her body resistant to sperm. You know, the pill suppresses ovulation. It prevents sperm from having access to the uterus by filling the cervix with a thick mucus plug, which we produce anyways. But when you’re on the pill, it’s just always in place. And then it also thins the uterine lining to make the lining not receptive to a fertilized egg. So there’s three main fronts that the pill then works to prevent pregnancy.

But you could look at it in a way that the pill makes women’s bodies resistant to sperm — sperm-resistant bodies. And because of that, so before the pill, you couldn’t just expect to have sex with a woman whenever you want and have no consequences. There was always this chance that she could get pregnant if she’s not hormonally modified. Her body is not resistant to sperm. You know, sex can then result in pregnancy if you have sex in the fertile window. But when a woman’s on the pill or other type of birth control, then essentially it gives men the ability to access women’s bodies whenever they want to ejaculate inside of them and basically have that thought of kind of separating sex from pregnancy. So it’s very interesting.

It’s a privilege for men to be able to have access to women’s bodies like that and to be able to, you know, ejaculate inside of them and to really have no consequences. And I always find it interesting when you do have a couple that is intimate with each other and say the woman’s on birth control, but as we’ve talked about on the show quite a bit, there’s no birth control method that is 100% effective. Whether you’re on the pill or you’re using the IUD or the patch or the ring, although these methods are highly effective and when used perfectly, you know, the effectiveness rate is in the 90%, the typical use is always a bit lower than that. And there are women who have and do get pregnant on any birth control method.

And so I always find it interesting then that thought of, if you are using birth control and conception happens, it’s kind of like, how did this happen? How is this possible? But from the flip side, as a woman who hasn’t had to rely on external measures essentially all of these years, in my own life, like I said, there’s no ejaculation inside of my body unless it’s explicitly planned. So it’s almost like he has to have permission to do that. Actually, that’s exactly what it’s like. Unless we’ve explicitly said, and I’m charting and I say explicitly like this is okay, the fertile window’s over, you know, or I’m not in my fertile window yet, or whatever the case is. Because of that, it’s really shifted my perspective.

And in my opinion, I just think it’s such a privilege and it’s really interesting to be in a space where you really don’t have to worry about that — you can just have access to women’s bodies, ejaculate inside of them, and really just not even consider that pregnancy is a possibility. And as far as I’m concerned, any time that you’re ejaculating inside a woman’s body and she’s not charting, that to me, I just — it completely blows my mind because I’ve just never been in that space.

The point being that the pill has really set up this expectation that sex is separate from pregnancy and that men are able to have access to women’s bodies without consequences. And so what if it was different?

And so what I appreciate about this article, although like I said, I don’t 100% agree with it, she really goes on to — there’s a lot of points of it that people have a hard time with because she goes on to suggest like, what if we gave men vasectomies and then they had to like, you know, reverse them when they were ready to have families and things like that. And a lot of women are like, holy cow, that’s going too far. That sounds like eugenics, that’s crazy. But in many ways, by going on the pill and making our bodies essentially resistant to sperm all those years, shutting down our hormones and our endocrine system, we’re making ourselves temporarily sterile, putting ourselves into a chemical menopause. If you look at the hormone levels of a woman on the pill compared to her natural hormones, the ones that she produces, compared to a woman in menopause, the patterns are quite similar. So as women, we’re willing to go into essentially a chemical menopause to prevent pregnancy and then kind of like come off of it when we’re ready to get pregnant.

But if somebody says like, well, what if men had vasectomies and then we reverse them when they were ready to have family, that really kind of brings up in us a lot of feelings of like, how could we do that? That’s not fair. That doesn’t make sense. But I think, again, I’m not endorsing that. I’m not saying that that’s a solution. So don’t put words in my mouth. I’m just talking about the arguments here because I think it’s very interesting.

What is most interesting is our kind of guttural reaction to that — like that’s wrong, how could we ask men to do that? That’s just so unfair. And how could it be that as women, we’re not supposed to be taking responsibility? But like I said at the beginning, my radical thought on it is what if we each took 100% responsibility? So what would it be like as women if we took 100% responsibility of our fertility? So however that looks. Whether you’re using a hormonal method, whether you’re charting your cycles and identifying your fertile window with fertility awareness, whether you’re using an IUD, whatever method that you’re choosing to use. But what if your partner was equally invested — 100%. So what if your partner made sure that he did not ejaculate inside of your body unless you were specifically trying to get pregnant, or you had specifically identified that it was not a fertile day and pregnancy was impossible. So what if men took just as much care? What if you were with a partner who would never ejaculate inside of your body — whether it was that he always used a condom regardless, or he always withdrew — and that was just his thing, because he just didn’t want to put you in that position?

What if we just looked at it differently? And so again, I’m just sharing ideas because this article and the reactions to it I found to be super, super interesting. Because it really came down to this like, it’s not fair to put it on men, and to say women can just do whatever they want. But what I’m saying is, what if both parties acted like adults and took full responsibility for their part in it? Babies don’t just happen. Pregnancies don’t just happen randomly. We have a lot of passive language around how we talk about pregnancy in our culture. She got pregnant, she got knocked up, all this kind of stuff. It’s right there within our language. We have a lot of language around pregnancy and it completely leaves men off the hook because the language always just makes it seem like pregnancy is something that just happens.

And as a mother of two sons, I think to myself, well, no, I wouldn’t want to raise boys that are so entitled that they believe that it’s completely fine to just run around and have sex with women, ejaculate inside their bodies, and then be shocked if they got pregnant. I want to be really clear that if you ejaculate inside of a woman and she gets pregnant, I mean, that’s on you, right? And I’m not saying that she doesn’t have responsibility because each party has to take 100% responsibility. But I think the part of the conversation that we forget is that it could look different, you know? We could live in a world where men are expected to take responsibility, men are expected to use condoms, men are expected to withdraw. They’re just expected to do that because we, to acknowledge the fact that unless you’re charting your cycles and you can completely confirm that you are not in your fertile window, if you ejaculate inside of a woman, that pregnancy is a possibility, even if you’re on birth control.

Okay, so I’m going to read another part of another response. One woman said in her response to the article, I found the article rather insulting as it painted women as childish and unable to handle responsibilities. If there is an unplanned pregnancy, it’s both party’s fault, not just the guy. The article insinuated that women are too weak to say no to unprotected sex or incapable of making bad decisions. Currently, women have babies, which means the responsibility of not getting pregnant falls on us.

And again, I feel like these responses — she wasn’t actually saying anything about women. She wasn’t saying that women aren’t capable of handling their business because women are capable. Since the responsibility currently does fall on us predominantly, we are capable and have to be capable and do step up. I think that she was addressing kind of the hole in the logic where by saying that women are responsible, it somehow puts men off the hook. But what if we were both responsible?

So just a few things. I mean, I’ve already talked about how I think it’s really interesting if we really look at the effect that hormonal birth control has had on our culture. Now, it’s not necessarily negative. As a woman, it’s great to have the power to be able to make our bodies resistant to sperm so that you can have sex and not get pregnant. So it’s not to ignore the significance of the birth control pill and what it did mean for women and what it continues to mean for women. But the challenge with birth control is that it’s not this magical thing that just comes in and prevents you from getting pregnant without any side effects. So as time progresses, as more science and research come out, as more women use the pill, as we talk more about it, it’s quite apparent that the pill has a lot of specific health-related effects.

So from depression to low libido, to painful sex, to clitoral shrinkage and shrinkage of the vulvar tissues, to ovarian shrinkage and a delay in the return of your normal fertility, it impacts the menstrual cycle, it impacts how we assimilate nutrients, it leaves us deficient in a certain number of nutrients. The list is quite large, including B vitamins, zinc, magnesium, selenium, coenzyme Q10. It depresses thyroid function, it alters the vaginal microbiome and the gut microbiome. It really just goes on and on and on with the side effects associated with it.

And so it’s more of, you know, I believe in having these adult conversations about it. If it was just some simple thing, some magical wand that you could wave and you just were not able to get pregnant and it had no effect on your body, we wouldn’t really be having this conversation. But I think it’s just important to highlight the fact that as women, we’re willing to put ourselves, our bodies, our hormones through all of those side effects, because the responsibility of pregnancy is entirely on us.

And a big part of it is due to the lack of education. So even though it’s men that are fertile every day, all the time, 24 hours a day every day, and women have only a small window of fertility, we’re not taught that. That’s something that is not brought to our attention. We’re kept largely in the dark about how our reproductive cycles function. And so that keeps this system in place where for some women, learning that you’re only fertile for a short window of time, about a week a cycle, it really calls into question, well, if I’m only fertile for a short period of time, then why do I have to be on a birth control method all the time? No woman is having sex every single day, 24 hours a day anyways.

And so although everyone doesn’t want to modify their behavior every time we have sex and be cognizant of that, it’s just very interesting that in a way, the way that we think about birth control and pregnancy prevention, it seems as though the goal is to not interfere with men’s pleasure and not interfere with men’s access to women’s bodies, and it seems as though we’re trying to make our bodies insensitive to sperm so that men can continue to interact with women’s bodies however they want instead of asking men to modify their behavior as the default.

So I’m not saying either is right or wrong and I think the important thing as well is every couple is different. And so what is appropriate for one couple is not appropriate for the other. And I’m not saying there’s one right way, because there isn’t. And that’s why we have so many different birth control methods and we have so many different options available to us.

I just want to just put out these ideas and these concepts and these thoughts in the spirit of having an adult conversation about it. Because if you think about it, I mean, what the birth control pill and hormonal birth control does is it essentially makes our bodies resistant to sperm and it allows us to basically just be there and allows men to continue to have unlimited access to our bodies without having to modify their behavior or even think about it or take responsibility for it. So that if pregnancy occurs, well, it’s not on him because you were supposed to take care of it. You were supposed to make sure that you were taking your pills, or that you were getting your shot, or that you were replacing your patch, or whatever it is. You were supposed to, you know, you took the IUD, it was supposed to do the work. And so it essentially completely lets men off the hook.

And I think it’s important to invite men into the conversation because I don’t think we should underestimate men. I think that men are fully capable of stepping up and taking responsibility for their part in it. And although, yes, from a historical standpoint, there are to this day men out there that are not willing to modify their behavior, not willing to use condoms, not willing to withdraw, not willing to just do anything different with regards to the way that they interact sexually with women, there are so many men who, for many women who are listening, you’re already in that situation. There’s a lot of women whose relationships do look like this, where their partners are taking 100% of their responsibility by being really specific with their ejaculations — meaning only ejaculating inside of their partners when it’s explicitly been planned, or when they’re explicitly trying to have a baby, or outside of the fertile window, essentially when they’ve gotten permission because they know it’s not a fertile day.

And so that’s why I think this conversation is so important. And that’s why I wanted to share because I just feel like there’s more to this conversation. So I don’t think the solution is to like put blame on anybody and say it’s men’s fault or it’s women’s fault or anything like that. That’s not my message at all. But my message is about just education and to provoke some thought around it.

Because like I said, in my personal experience in relationships, I’ve never had that luxury. I’ve never had the ability for a male partner to just have a blanket access to my body whenever he wants. And it was just never like that. And I don’t think that that’s a bad thing. I think that it’s important to remember that pregnancy is possible when you have unprotected sex, and it causes both parties to be responsible about it. It causes you to have to have those adult discussions — what would happen if the condom broke? What would happen if I got pregnant? Because when you’re engaging in adult activities, it’s important to have adult conversations about what’s happening and what could happen. And these conversations need to be had even if you are using all the birth control and even if you are taking care of that, because all birth control methods have a failure rate.

And so as much as we can take responsibility for our part in it as women and take our birth control and chart our cycles, what if our partners also took 100% of the responsibility and made sure that they were only ejaculating inside of your body if it was explicitly planned, and if there was consent to do that, and if both parties were aware of how the cycle works, and just the actual truth in the fact that even if you’re using a birth control method, all birth control methods have failure rates. And just to have that conversation around it instead of being completely surprised when pregnancy happens, you know, after months or years of having unprotected sex.

And so I’ve brought up withdrawal a few times in the conversation. And I know for a lot of women that even brings up a lot of feelings around it. Withdrawal has basically been described as a non-method and in many conversations with couples, if the question comes up like, you know, have you been avoiding pregnancy, it’s kind of like looking down at the shoes like, well, you know, we’ve been using the pullout, with some degree of shame. So as a culture, we don’t really acknowledge that withdrawal is a method of birth control. And if you look it up, you’ll often see really low stats and essentially basically saying like, withdrawal doesn’t work. It’s not something that we would recommend. And essentially you’re basically told that no, don’t use it.

But the dirty little secret about withdrawal is that a lot of people use it. They don’t necessarily talk about it, but as a fertility awareness educator, you know, I’m working with women, supporting them to chart their cycles and to figure out ways to manage their fertile window. And like I said, each couple is different and each woman is different in terms of her comfort, in terms of the ways that she’s comfortable managing her fertile window and avoiding pregnancy. And there are so many couples out there who actually use withdrawal for years effectively and don’t get pregnant.

So when you look at what the research has to say about withdrawal, it’s really interesting. I talk about withdrawal in the Fifth Vital Sign and I talk about how to use it perfectly. But essentially, when you look at the research, what the research tells us about withdrawal is that when used perfectly, it’s up to 96% effective in preventing pregnancy. When you understand how fertility awareness works and you understand that there’s only a small window of fertility in your cycle, so if you’re going to get pregnant, it’s going to be during that six-day window. And in order to get pregnant, sperm have to meet your cervical fluid, and your cervical fluid then draws the sperm inside of your cervix and your uterus and your fallopian tubes so that it’s ready and waiting by the time ovulation happens.

So step one is understanding how the biology of this whole situation works. If you think about it, you know, if a man withdraws and there’s no sperm deposited in a woman’s reproductive tract, inside of her vagina near to her cervix, then if nothing else, it would dramatically reduce the chance of getting pregnant because there’s no sperm there.

So with withdrawal, the main point of contention in terms of could it be effective or could it not be effective is whether or not men actually contain sperm in their pre-ejaculate. So prior to ejaculation, men release pre-ejaculatory fluid that actually goes through and alkalinizes the urethra. So in terms of the specifics around the penis and how it works, when a man urinates, it passes through the same canal as when a man ejaculates. And sperm is very sensitive to the pH. Urine is acidic and sperm can’t survive in an acidic environment. So then naturally prior to ejaculation, what happens is men produce this pre-ejaculatory fluid that actually goes through the urethra, alkalinizes it, takes away the acidity that may still be there from the last time he went pee, so that when the sperm pass through the urethra, they’re able to kind of successfully make it through.

And so the big question, the question mark around withdrawal, is whether there is sperm in a man’s pre-ejaculatory fluid. Because if there is, then withdrawal wouldn’t be that effective. And, you know, surprise, surprise, there isn’t a ton of research on withdrawal. I couldn’t find like 300 scientific studies to compare them all, but there is research on it and the research is in a way inconclusive. So there are some studies that have been done where they test a man’s pre-ejaculatory fluid and some studies show that none of the participants had any sperm in the pre-ejaculatory fluid. And other studies have done it where they find that some men have been shown to have sperm in the pre-ejaculatory fluid whereas others did not. And so the research is not conclusive. It doesn’t give us a conclusive analysis. It would be nice if someone did a large-scale study and put a couple thousand men together and examined their pre-ejaculatory fluid so we would have a clear answer to this question. But at the end of the day, the research also tells us that with perfect use when used correctly, it’s up to 96% effective.

So why am I talking about withdrawal? My intention isn’t to promote it or to not promote it, but just to talk about it as an actual legitimate method of birth control. And I think that’s what’s missing from the conversation, because the dirty little secret about withdrawal, as I mentioned earlier, is that a lot of couples successfully use withdrawal as even their primary method of birth control for years and years and years. And I mean, one could argue that it may work for some couples and not others, because as I mentioned, the research is inconclusive. And if you look at the research, it would appear as though some men potentially do have sperm in their pre-ejaculatory fluid. And I have seen women comment that if you’re really inclined, you could potentially have your partner’s pre-ejaculatory fluid tested to see if there’s sperm in it.

But ultimately speaking, I like to talk about all of the methods of birth control whenever I have an opportunity, including withdrawal. Because if we’re having an honest conversation, there are a lot of couples out there. I mentioned, you know, there’s some men who are averse to wearing condoms and things like that. There’s a lot of women who don’t particularly love condoms also. And at the end of the day, couples are trying to find what works best for them. Couples are wanting to find a way to enjoy sex without being worried about getting pregnant, but also in the most enjoyable way for them. So for some couples, condoms are the best solution. For other couples, withdrawal is the best solution. And we should be able to talk about it. We should be able to talk about what the research says, what the effectiveness is, how to do it. And also it’s free. It’s available to everybody and it’s been shown to be up to 96% effective in preventing pregnancy. So why is that something that we would be so hesitant to even consider, even if it was just in conjunction with other methods?

Part of the reason to talk about this topic at this time as I’m releasing this episode is that it’s a really trying time in many different places in the United States. Women’s rights are being challenged and women’s access to abortion if they have an unplanned pregnancy that they don’t want — this is just a dire, dire time. And also in the United States, healthcare is not free. And Canada is a bit different because there’s a lot that we have covered here. But for many women, an unplanned pregnancy can be really devastating emotionally and financially in a number of different ways. Not to mention that in the United States, maternity leave is not something that is — it’s not in law, it’s not something that women have access to yet. So a pregnancy for women in these situations can mean something very different to a woman that does have access to healthcare and maternity leave and support.

So with that said, back to the initial argument — what if the world looked different, and what if as women we took 100% responsibility, but our partners also took 100% responsibility. As men, one of the ways that they could do that is literally like use condoms or withdraw every time. And again, it doesn’t have to look like that, but someone should say it out loud. Someone should just say that. Because what would be different? How would the world be different if men took 100% of the responsibility of pregnancy and basically refused to ejaculate inside of women unless they were specifically trying to have babies, or if they had received explicit consent that, okay, I’m outside of my fertile window and pregnancy is not possible? What would that look like?

And so this is just food for thought. I’m bringing up this conversation. I’m really excited and interested and a little bit nervous to hear what your responses are. I’m sure some of you are kind of there with me and others are like, what is she talking about? This is ridiculous, that article was crazy. And I want to hear about it. I want to hear what your perspectives are.

I did want to share what my perspectives are because they’re very different because I don’t think it has to be one or the other. I do believe that the responsibility is ours as women. I do believe that because obviously if a woman gets pregnant, she’s the one that has to carry the baby and handle the physicality of it. But at the same time, I also believe that men are responsible. I believe that men are 100% responsible. And I think that it’s really entitled for a man to be having sex with a woman and ejaculating inside of her body and if she gets pregnant for him to be surprised or upset or anything like that. Because if you are having sex with a woman and you are ejaculating inside of her body, pregnancy is possible. You know, if she’s not charting, if you haven’t specifically organized that, if you don’t know what’s happening with her fertile window — in my opinion, because no birth control method is completely infallible, it has to be there as a part of an adult conversation.

And so that’s why I like this article. I know that it was really controversial. And I mean, I read past a lot of the things that I didn’t agree with. Like I said, I don’t agree with everything she says. I don’t believe that we should be blaming anybody because it’s not, to me, it’s not about blame. It’s literally just about having these conversations, about getting to a different place in the world where we can stop putting 100% of the responsibility on women and basically putting zero percent of the responsibility on men, especially in this world as complicated as it is for women.

And so in many ways, I do agree with the fundamental kind of basic part of what she’s saying, which is that, well, you can’t get pregnant unless a man ejaculates inside of your body. And so as men, that’s something that they can control. You know, that’s within a man’s control to kind of look at his part in it. And as women, it’s within our control to look at our part in it. And it shouldn’t be either or. It shouldn’t be like him or me. It should actually be both of us.

So now I want to hear what you have to say about it. I will post a very controversial — maybe I’ll post the article again and I’ll link to this podcast episode in the Fertility Friday Facebook group. But I want to hear what you have to say about it because I really think this is an important conversation or I wouldn’t be talking about it. I think that it’s really important for us to just continue moving forward with this discussion of birth control. As more and more evidence comes out about the harmful impacts of the birth control pill, and as more and more women become more health conscious and are kind of going away from traditional methods, these conversations have to happen. Because if you are not essentially making your body resistant to sperm with hormones, then you have to have these conversations about what you’re going to do so that you can have babies when you want and not have babies when you don’t want. And we have the power to do that.

And sometimes I think it’s important just to put that out there that it is possible with the support of your partner to only have babies when you want, whether you’re on hormonal birth control or not. And ultimately if you’re not on hormonal birth control, it does require that relationship, that communication, and that mutual respect for each other so that you can come to these decisions together. And in many ways, I think that that’s better. It’s good to bring men into the conversation about birth control, as opposed to kind of completely eliminating them from the conversation and wanting to take care of it 100% on our own. Because ultimately, sex isn’t something that we do 100% on our own. It’s something that we do with another person.

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/404. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode. It really is one of the topics I love talking about. And I think part of the reason is because it kind of goes deeper into some of our preconceived notions, our societal roles and gender norms, even what we expect from a partner in an intimate relationship. And I think it encourages us to have these conversations with our partner.

And if you’re not partnered or if you’re in a new relationship or in between relationships, I also think it makes us think about what we should be expecting. And I suppose it could also lead to the question of what are we tolerating, you know, in terms of our expectations of what our partner will do. I think that the birth control pill does lend itself to this idea that it would be such a burden to ask him to do anything. I just need to, right? Like I feel like it normalizes this idea that he just doesn’t have to change any of his behavior at all, he doesn’t have to modify anything that he does at all. And I think that we should question that, especially because for those of you who have switched to fertility awareness or are thinking about it, that can be one of the kind of mental barriers or emotional blocks, because you might wonder to yourself, well, would my partner even be open to this? Would I be able to find a guy who would be willing to be intimate with me if I’m not on contraceptives? And how do we manage the fertile window? Like, would he be okay with modifying his behavior?

And one of the things that I have found is that men generally are just happy that you are willing to take off your clothes around them. They’re generally thrilled about this. And so ultimately, when you’re with a partner who’s loving and supportive and who really wants the best for you emotionally, physically, and all of those things, then often men are very supportive of fertility awareness. And I’ve had a number of clients who come off birth control and they experience an improvement in their libido and things like that. And often their partners are thrilled that they have more of a libido now and that they are more willing to have sex. And yes, of course, it makes the interaction different when there are periods of time where you are fertile and you can’t just have unprotected sex. You have to kind of figure this out if you’re wanting to prevent pregnancy. But these are all things that are figure-out-able, I guess.

And so if anything, what I hope for this episode is that it has given you some food for thought and potentially an interesting conversation starter for your partners and friends, just to kind of shake up some of these expectations that we have — where we live in a world where as women we’re just expected to just take on the whole responsibility of contraception and basically men are totally let off the hook. So if anything, I would just like to put a little pin in that, or throw a little wrench in that, and say — or we could do it differently.

So with that said, I hope you have a wonderful week, weekend, whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.