> YCT-529 works by interfering with vitamin A signaling necessary for sperm production and fertility.
> The importance of dietary vitamin A and retinoid signaling for male germ cell development and differentiation has been recognized for many years6. All trans-retinoic acid (Fig. 1a) is an active metabolite of vitamin A that exerts its function, at least partly, by binding to retinoic acid receptors (RARs). The RARs α, β, and γ, are encoded by the Rara, Rarb, and Rarg genes in mice, and Rarα and Rarγ have been validated as contraceptive targets by genetic knockouts resulting in male sterility7,8. Notably, the effects on spermatogenesis in the absence of RARα most resemble the loss of RAR signaling in vitamin A deficiency, and the mice are otherwise normal7,8. Further, the effects on spermatogenesis in animals treated orally with the dual RARα/RARγ antagonist BMS-189453 (Fig. 1a, b) closely phenocopied the absence of RARα function. Importantly, the resulting male sterility is reversible9,10,11. We, therefore, wished to identify RARα−selective inhibitors for potential male non-hormonal contraception. Our study describes the development of YCT-529, a highly selective RARα antagonist that reduces sperm counts in mice and non-human primates. Mating studies with male mice treated with 10 mg/kg/day for 4 weeks show that YCT-529 is 99% effective in preventing pregnancies and that the mice fully regain fertility after drug cessation.
This raised concerns in my mind. Retinoids are associated with birth defects, so they'd have to make sure there isn't crossover of the drug to the woman and that it wouldn't cause these problems.
Shouldn't be an issue if the contraception is doing it's job since the retinoids are only a risk while taking them while pregnant. I also doubt semen contain retinoids or any rel level of vitamin A.
We had alpha-blockers for a long time now, which prevents ejaculation but not orgasm; read: it can completely block the emission phase of ejaculation, while orgasmic function is retained.
Example: Silodosin.
You need to experiment with it. Sensitive clinical trials measured rates as high as 90-99%.
It is entirely non-hormonal. It does not affect libido (rarely), while hormonal male contraceptives do, and it is reversible upon cessation, without any delay, unlike hormonal male contraceptives.
Circulatory side effects like dizziness or orthostatic hypotension do occur, though they tend to be mild and dose-dependent.
You're right that it doesn't stop sperm production, just emission. As for "the drip"; that's pre-ejaculate, which doesn't contain sperm inherently, but can pick up residual sperm in the urethra from a prior ejaculation.
And that's true, anejaculatory orgasms can feel strange or less satisfying for some, but it is not universal.
> Otherwise if taken as a single dose fresh, side effects like orthostatic hypotension are vastly increased.
That is true.
Edit: I / We will have to research the side-effect profile and mechanisms of the mentioned pill (in the submission). I have not yet done so. They mention no side-effects but it might be too early to tell.
> You're right that it doesn't stop sperm production, just emission. As for "the drip"; that's pre-ejaculate, which doesn't contain sperm inherently, but can pick up residual sperm in the urethra from a prior ejaculation.
I’d like to stress that point a bit.
I had a vasectomy about a year ago, and being the weirdo that I am, I figured I’d see how much sperm remained in my ejaculate (and for how long) after the procedure.
I waited maybe two or three days after the procedure, and then for the next three days, I’d collect three samples per day and take a look under my microscope. In the first four or five samples, the swimmers were swimming hard. Told my brother (who had been trying for a kid for a couple years, and had observed his own samples trying correlate diet and other factors to improved motility) about the straight laser beams I was seeing in the scope — he nearly had a fit when I described how long it took them to go from one side of the slide to the other under the given magnification.
It was the ninth sample when there were very few observable sperm, and what remained looked kinda drunk and unmotivated.
All of that to say: if you’re going to get a vasectomy, when your doctor tells you to abstain from condom-less/birthcontrol-less sex until you come back for a sperm count, take that seriously. It’s amazing how motile they are even when kinda old, and also amazing how many hang around downstream of the vas deferens after many ejaculations. And, while rare, sometimes the vas deferens do manage to reconnect.
And a bonus tip along these lines: testosterone replacement, even without hCG, is not a reliable form of birth control. I’m on (and was on) TRT, without hCG, and the concentration of sperm under the scope looked higher than any YouTube video I could find at the same magnification (meanwhile my bro is taking silly amounts of hCG and struggling). I hear a lot of people joke about TRT having the beneficial side effect of infertility, but that’s far from a certainty.
Relatedly, this is also why the “failure” rate for vasectomy isn’t vanishingly close to 0%: it’s almost all dudes having unprotected sex in the first month or so after the procedure.
Spontaneous reconnection happens but is extremely rare. If you can follow the doctor’s orders for a few weeks, vasectomy’s failure rate may as well be 0%.
What's the mechanism for that? Maybe a few sperm are stuck in the sperm ducts past the point they were severed, but the ducts are cut and sealed, aren't they? Even if they weren't sealed, it would be Russian Roulette trying to get across the gap in what's effectively just body cavity space.
My expectation would be the first sample might have lower but significant sperm count, and each subsequent sample would decrease dramatically until any residual sperm died and the count was zero. You're talking about motility, not count, but it doesn't sound like you noticed a drastic decrease from sample to sample. That doesn't seem right according to my understanding.
Well, to be clear, I didn’t actually count the sperm, as I was more interested in a rough, qualitative (rather than rigorous, quantitative) observation.
That said, yeah, the relative amount of sperm didn’t drop off noticeably at the offset. And I think that kind of makes sense: as someone with a relatively short refractory period, let’s suppose I ejaculate two or three times in 5 minutes: I doubt (though I could be wrong) that my body actually evacuated all of the seminal fluid (and fully replaced it) each time. I would bet there’s simply a bunch “left in the tank”. Would be interesting to hear from a urologist (or someone with similar expertise).
> And that's true, anejaculatory orgasms can feel strange or less satisfying for some, but it is not universal.
I would have been ok with less satisfying but it felt horrible, like it was going somewhere else instead of coming out. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone
> Both mice and non-human primates fully regained fertility after stopping the drug. Mice regained fertility within six weeks, and non-human primates fully recovered their sperm count in 10-15 weeks.
Hard pass on messing with my fertility like that, too, TBH.
What exactly is your point? I have already stated my preferred methods, none of which involve hormonal birth control pills. Moreover, I have never attempted to persuade or pressure anyone into using such medications.
In relationships, mutual understanding and compromise are essential. I fully acknowledge that certain decisions come with trade-offs. For example, I would not hesitate to take Silodosin and deal with its potential side effects if it benefited the relationship. I would expect the same level of consideration in return (reciprocity), but that does not equate to coercion or irresponsibility.
My position remains unchanged: I would avoid hormonal contraceptives for myself, and I do not advocate their use by others. My preferred approaches are non-hormonal and do not carry such implications (as I have stated in previous comments). That said, I believe that in a committed relationship, some level of shared sacrifice or compromise is not only inevitable, but necessary.
Given that, I fail to see how your point is relevant to the context of our discussion. If your intention was to imply that I expect others to make sacrifices I would not make myself, then I outright reject that assumption. Mutual responsibility, respect, and voluntary compromise are foundational to any relationship I engage in, coercion has no place in it.
If this conversation is shifting from an exchange of ideas to personal insinuations, I see little value in continuing it further.
I have always been amazed at how effective the pull out method was.
I had sex for years with my wife and always pulled out. 2x a week for probably 10 years. After we decided to have a kid, she was pregnant in a month.
Really incredible how effective such a simple solution is
What's the point? Well, the other 99% of the experience and all its pleasure, intimacy and sensation adds up to a lot more than those few seconds of ejaculation.
To be fair, I think most normal people in a relationship use this method, but if you tell people on the Internet about it, they get upset for some reason.
Most normal people? The implied judgement aside, that is wildly untrue. Most people (80+ % who are not trying for a child) use birth control, this is an easy stat to look up. Maybe people “get upset” because you’re making things up?
I'm not saying it's a very common method (maybe, maybe not), but cycle timing is often included in "birth control" stats and used as a secondary measure with other forms of birth control.
You can just look up these numbers, of various forms of birth control. That exclude cycle timing.
And none of them say it’s “most people”. Perhaps some unmeasured population uses it as a secondary method, that’s total speculation and kind of beside the point
Are we (or the grandparent) talking most people at one point in time, or most people at any time during their life? If it's the latter, then I do think it's a valid claim, but I haven't seen any stats that cover those sorts of numbers. Eg have more than 50% of people in a committed relationship never used the timing method? Most of the couples I am good friends with have used the cycle timing method when they want another kid, want to delay it, but are open to having one sooner. This is also commonly combined with secondary measures, such as condoms, pulling out, or even abstinence during the fertile window (why measure cycle timing if you're not changing your behavior, using another method, based on the observation).
no, this doesn’t seem to be the case. more than 80% of those avoiding pregnancy use condoms, pill, tied tubes, vasectomy, iud, etc… this 80% does not include withdrawal. [0]
The 80% claim must include withdrawal, because their claim is that the population not using any method has only a 15% non-pregnancy rate within a year. But withdrawal has a much higher 80-96% rate of non-pregnancy within a year.
> Sexually active couples who do not use any method of contraception have approximately an 85% chance of experiencing a pregnancy over the course of a year.
Therefore, withdrawal is a method of contraception.
i could be misinterpreting what you mean by “most normal people” but it’s a wildly strange use, most people who aren’t seeking pregnancy use some form of contraceptive [0], the pill, condoms, etc… it’s almost 90% of sexually active and its been this steady since 2002.
> … who were not seeking pregnancy, 88% were using a contraceptive method in 2016, and this proportion has remained steady since 2002.
it seems most normal people are using contraceptives.
> …they get upset for some reason
im sure very few people are “upset” about this. are you misinterpreting someone correcting your overestimations as if they’re being upset?
Couples using this method tend to be mostly fine with any "failure". They might want a child but not now, or are not completely sure but would do their best if it happens.
Couples who clearly don't want children typically have already discussed their stance in the couple and will be way more thorough about birth control. That's typically not the demographic that will YOLO it, so I guess you'd get much more pushback on that front ?
I agree and want to add that the scenarios you point out could also be for a single couple at different points in time. Risk tolerance changes over time with different circumstances.
What? This is the definition of anecdotal evidence. It’s not very effective at all in practice, statistically.
> For every 100 people who use the pull out method perfectly, 4 will get pregnant.
> But pulling out can be difficult to do perfectly. So in real life, about 22 out of 100 people who use withdrawal get pregnant every year — that’s about 1 in 5.
> For every 100 people who use the pull out method perfectly, 4 will get pregnant.
Are those 4-in-100 distributed randomly?
Did the pregnancies result despite 100% adherence to the method, or was there occasional failure to adhere?
There's a big difference between a method being ineffective from the perspective of a health care provider, and a method being ineffective in absolute terms.
A provider has to care about what broad cross sections of people will actually do, rather than what they say they will do.
If you're an individual person who knows they can adhere to the method perfectly, the fact people on average cannot or will not adhere perfectly has no particular relevance to you.
I have no horse in this race, but the same difference in the meaning of "efficacy" arises in all sorts of aspects of health care, like advice on diet and exercise, or the prescription of specific exercises for physical therapy.
The stats are not hard to look up, but they do seem somewhat hard to gather. The site you linked doesn't reference a study, but I imagine that asking a bunch of people if they pulled out "perfectly", even for quite stringent definitions of "perfectly" will result in quite a lot of variance.
I'm not trying to no-true-Scotsman birth control methods, just pointing out that it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions when all you have is people's word.
If no semen is emitted, the chance of pregnancy is null (more about it in my other comments).
Plus 90–99% suppression of ejaculation has been recorded and suggested that it has a potentially high contraceptive efficacy, so that is way better than withdrawal.
Experiment, maybe it affects you in a way that you get 99%, which would make it a very efficient hormone-free male birth control pill.
Side-note: personally I prefer IUDs, and/or a medication that has been extensively studied, so this pill can wait.
The "as typically used" quoted figure for pulling out ("withdrawal") is 80% success, but the ideal use figure is 96-98%. If you know a little bit about yourself and also aren't going back to back without peeing, you can do a lot better than the 80% figure. (Also yeah, it's amusing that both of these figures are more or less identical to male condoms.)
(Meta-comment: probably best to keep everything in "success" percentage figures for direct comparison, instead of switching to failure percentages for some figures.)
The body has several well-regulated mechanisms for handling it.
If semen isn't ejaculated, the body reabsorbs the sperm in the epididymis and recycles the cellular material. Seminal fluids, which are produced during arousal, are either reabsorbed or, in cases like retrograde ejaculation (e.g., with alpha-blockers), pass into the bladder and are later urinated out. The system self-regulates; there's no harmful buildup to worry about. :)
So, TL;DR: You will just urinate it out in our case.
From what I gathered, it does not appear to have an impact on prostate cancer risk since the prostate still undergoes stimulation and fluid production, and the contents are still expelled.
Silodosine-induced retrograde ejaculation does not prevent ejaculation from occurring, it simply redirects the pathway (different anatomical exit).
It is different from chronic ejaculatory abstinence.
Hmm, I wonder if it's really unaffected. Have they found a mechanism for the small but statistically significant increase in prostate cancer rates related to vasectomy?
Sperm is virtually entirely absent from pre-ejaculation fluids if you've peed since the last time you ejaculated. Almost all of the "sperm can be in pre-ejaculate" effect is from having sex a second time in a row without anything flushing out the tubes.
Fair, and it needs clarification to avoid conflating pre-ejaculate, seminal plasma, and sperm emission.
It may be confusing, so to clarify: "seminal fluids" is a term typically used to refer to the fluid released during ejaculation, not throughout the arousal phase. The idea that sperm would be in the mix before the emission phase goes against standard reproductive physiology.
Sperm are only actively introduced into seminal fluid during the emission phase of ejaculation; the so-called "grand finale." :D. Before that, in the arousal phase, the fluids released (like pre-ejaculate) typically contain no sperm unless there's residual contamination from a previous ejaculation.
It's not. I think johnisgood and loeg both know this, but they're being dangerously simplistic in some of their replies.
If you recognize emission — not just when expulsion is imminent — and if you pull out and that's the end of vaginal intercourse until you've cleared the urethra again, then that's probably nearly perfect at preventing pregnancy.
Take it a step further into 'Demolition Man' territory to get the orgasm without any physical contact. Certainly would be good for reducing STDs though no doubt would come with a whole range of societal impacts.
In all honesty, orgasm without physical contact is entirely possible already (mental orgasm / psychological stimulation), but it is not common and not easy.
Fantasy, meditation, hypnosis, Kegel exercises... They could lead to orgasms and sometimes even ejaculation (which would be bad in this case).
Some medications rarely may cause spontaneous orgasms, even, without physical contact, arousal or stimulation.
First off, this thread seems to bring out the most "reddit-like" posts on HN.
If you've come here to shoot a funny one-liner comment, please reconsider - the point is discussion, not karma farming.
Now, on the topic itself - I really wonder about the safety profile of these. While this selectively inhibits only RARα and is thus "biased" towards mostly acting on testes, it could also have side-effects - and while the effect might not be pronounced yet, with long term use it definitely could be, especially if all the RARα receptors get inhibited (will beta and gamma pick up the slack? what is it going to cause?).
Considering the 99% effectiveness claim and the method of action, I wonder if the embryos in that 1% case can even survive.
1) Long-term effects are surely a topic but as with female birth control and the risks connected to it, as well as female-male couples where the female has an incompatibility with birth control, the male partners might take the risk of using it
2) Does it matter if the embryo will survive even in the 1% case? Somebody who uses birth control would not want a child anyway, right?
Contraception should be readily available for those that want it. Abortion should absolutely and definitevely be available for those that want and need it. There are far too many opinions connected to religious dogma, both consciously and unconsciously, that seek to deny women and couples access to abortion. Even the damned bible offers up instructions on abortives and how to use them, but this seems to be glossed over by hand wringing people who want to insert their rosaries into women's ovaries.
That quickly breaks down when you apply it to some of the recent culture war topics. For instance:
* as it relates to vaccine mandates: "As they have the right to…for themselves.
* as it relates to calling people by their preferred pronouns: "As they have the right to…for themselves."
Of course, both issues are far more nuanced than a simple "As they have the right to…for themselves" can refute, but so is abortion. You can't take complex issues and take potshots at them with one sentence comments.
It's all so much more simple than that. It boils down to a social contract.
The contract being common decency. Vaccinations are part of that contract (it affects others), pronouns are part of that contract (they affect others), abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).
There is no nuance at all. You are free, of course, to not "sign" that contract - but that means that those who have are not obligated to apply it to you.
The anti-abortion "argument" (everyone on all sides are really just asserting things because there doesn't appear to be anything to argue about) is that abortion is murdering a child.
If someone accepts that frame, would you attempt to argue that there is no social contract to protect the lives of children? That seems like a tough argument to carry.
Unfortunately, that argument tends to break down almost immediately after birth, so “protecting the children” becomes a cheap catch-all excuse for selective engagement. Defunding education, defunding school food, defunding numerous programs that actually protect children in favor of cash in their pocket. Morality sold cheaply or abandoned for convenience, except when forcing their will on others, especially if it only affects someone else.
Did you narrow down that topic to American conservatives? I'm not familiar with your politics but that doesn't sound familiar in context of my country.
Also, this is whataboutism. If someone cares about A but not enough about B, it doesn't mean that A is not a good thing.
Of course this predicates that there are differences between A and B. The GP is, I believe, making the point that claiming to protect unwanted unborn children (A) when campaigning for anti-abortion regulation is just a power-play to dictate a lifestyle choice, if it does not follow up with protecting the unwanted born children (B). I think, there is merit to this.
Observations shows that most societies forbid woman to throw their unwanted born child into a garbage bin, so if you claim that women are or should be as free as men in their lifestyle choices, where does that leave the woman? Either you need birth control to prevent that situation, or a social security network that takes care of the unwanted child after the fact. In my simple, male mind this should be a given. Otherwise, if I were a woman, I would refuse sex. The ancient Greeks have a funny story about that [0].
Of course, you can also say that women aren't allowed to be as free as men in their lifestyle choices. And I think, I'm not going too far out on a limb when I say that's actually at the bottom of this issue. Some people think it is OK to make women less free than men in the service of their ideals, while others think it is not. Resolve this tension and you will make progress.
Can you help me understand how criminalizing abortion makes women less free than men?
It sounds like your premise is that women have less freedom in personal choice than men when abortion is not available. Presumably this is because men can walk away from a child while women are physically bound to them. Do I have that correct?
If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy. Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.
I would also contest that men aren't totally free of sexual consequence. If they do happen to impregnate a woman, they can be forced to pay child support while the child is a minor.
The "abortion is murder" argument also doesn't totally meet the GGP's premise necessitating A and B. That is, if society is unwilling to provide a safety net for born, unwanted children, no contradiction exists if society also refuses to allow abortion. This just means society does not allow murder. After all, a society that does not provide a safety net does not explicity allow the murder of poor people. Just as a society that disallows murder does not necessarily have to provide nourishment via the government.
> If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy.
Financially also. In America, child birth will set you back 10-15k insured or 30-50k uninsured. Who pays for that? The woman who has been unable to work due to the debilitating condition that late stages of pregnancy is for most woman?
> Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.
That doesn't deal with what happens to the child. I assume the GP comment is concerned with "pro-life" vs "pro-birth." Many self-proclaimed pro-lifers actually advocate for birth, not life.
I had a baby 3 months ago. It was nowhere near $10-15k, and for some completely unknown reason to me and my spouse the hospital applied a 75% needs-based discount. I'm not even sure if we hit the total out of pocket max for the year, but even if we did the cap is only roughly $6k.
> That doesn't deal with what happens to the child. I assume the GP comment is concerned with "pro-life" vs "pro-birth." Many self-proclaimed pro-lifers actually advocate for birth, not life.
Birth is life.
True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder. But there are plenty of adoption agencies, etc. that exist. Plenty of non government orgs that exist. It is unlikely a child will die of hunger, especially in a developed country.
And if there are no people willing to adopt the child with which the new mother is burdned? Tough. Maybe consider that when one engages in sex. But in a society that views abortion as murder: murder is murder. Having flippant sex and then murdering a child to prevent raising it should probably be at least equated to voluntary manslaughter. Sure, you didn't mean for the situation to arise, but your previous decisions resulted in the outcome nonetheless.
It seems the push for treating abortion as non-murder is really a push for a world in which sex and babies are decoupled. But just as sex and disease cannot be decoupled except through careful planning and purposeful engagement, neither can sex and babies.
> Can you help me understand how criminalizing abortion makes women less free than men?
Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?
> It sounds like your premise is that women have less freedom in personal choice than men when abortion is not available. Presumably this is because men can walk away from a child while women are physically bound to them. Do I have that correct?
Your presumption is partially correct.
> If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy. Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.
They are also less free because such a law -- even if only for the time of pregnancy -- prescribes a lifestyle with very limited choices. Ignoring that the physique of a pregnant woman makes some things mostly impossible, thus making the woman less free, I also guess anti-abortionists are not in the habit of applauding pregnant women who drink and smoke while stage-diving on a heavy metal concert. And while this is hyperbole I assume you get my drift.
> I would also contest that men aren't totally free of sexual consequence. If they do happen to impregnate a woman, they can be forced to pay child support while the child is a minor.
But would you accept that men are mostly free? For example, where's the woman in child support? Do the men have to pay the woman 9 month+ for pain, puking, limited lifestyle choices, and possible health consequences, too? Or how about strapping an additional 100g of weight to the man's belly for each week of the 40+ weeks of pregnancy? While we are at it, let's give him a good kick in the stomach once or twice a day for that time. What about the misery you feel when you are forced to do something you don't want to every waking and sleeping minute? You know, its not like a job where you are done and go home at 5 p.m. These arguments about money treat women as unfeeling delivery machines, nothing but cattle really, which in itself not only makes them less free, it makes them less than men.
> The "abortion is murder" argument also doesn't totally meet the GGP's premise necessitating A and B. That is, if society is unwilling to provide a safety net for born, unwanted children, no contradiction exists if society also refuses to allow abortion. This just means society does not allow murder. After all, a society that does not provide a safety net does not explicity allow the murder of poor people. Just as a society that disallows murder does not necessarily have to provide nourishment via the government.
Leaving aside the question if the removal of a lump of cells that can not be sustained outside of a woman's womb is homicide, let alone murder, in any meaningful sense, I am happy to engage with your premises.
So, the society you paint does not care about the child or the woman, it cares about murder. That's technically fine (the best kind of fine) if you are honest about it. Opponents to abortion in that society do not claim they care for children or women. Because, again according to your premises they don't, they just want that no murders happen. So nobody cares about the children, thus there is no inconsistency, which is great. It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.
Frankly, I would be shocked if anybody would think that would be fine, but the premises and line of argument you offer would allow just that.
> It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.
I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."
If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.
That said, I do not think a contradiction is introduced if the same society treated exposure as murder. In fact, it is similar to removing a clump of cells that cannot live outside the womb: purposeful death through exposure. It seems similar to murder if person A locks person B in a room and provides no food or water. Eventually person B starves, which would likely be seen as murder.
> Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?
I think our main clash is in how we treat fairness. Of course your proposed hair-cutting law would be unfair. Both men and women exist such that it can be applied. Abortion is inherently asymmetric: men cannot get pregnant. [1]
As such, the law has two options: write it in such a way that 1. outcomes can be completely fair (or as close as possible given the biological differences) or 2. write laws that are tailored to the asymmetry of sexes.
(1) Provides a solution where abortion is allowed. The outcome must satisify the condition that both men and women can walk away from a pregnancy without burden.
(2) Recognizes that men, being incapable of bearing children, must be held accountable for their actions somehow, and monetary damages are probably the most fair way to provide compensation. Maybe the damages need to be increased when compared to current US society, but alternative solutions like forced marriage or forcing the man to be in proximity to help a women through pregnancy probably lead to less free outcomes.
Given the two choices, constrained by a society that equates abortion to murder, (2) is the only valid choice. Yes, there is an enormous burden physically, mentally, financially for the women. Given a deadbeat father, the only way to help the woman is by penalizing him enough financially to try and relieve these burdens as much as possible.
This is why I would suggest that, in such a society, both men and women make sexual decisions with careful forethought and premeditation. One should ask themself if they are prepared to birth or financially compensate their tango partner before getting on the dance floor.
[1] The asymmetry cuts both ways. Under prochoice laws, men cannot choose to have a child; all a man can do is impregnate a woman. Women get the only say in whether a child will be born, fairness be damned.
> I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."
> If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.
I think, the concept you are looking for is "negligent homicide", which is not murder. You can look it up. But this is just the same territory of discussion where we argue how many cells in a womb make a human being. It is pointless. You apparently have a loser understanding of murder and what makes a human being than I do and just as you will not convince me that a blastocyste is in any shape or form something that can be murdered, I will not be able to convince you that I'm right. So let's agree to disagree on this topic.
But since we have to live together in this society and being civilized and educated people, we can have a fruitful discussion on the topic of justice and fairness anyway. I happen to think your options do not exhaust the solution space, for example we could also reverse the responsibilities. We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice. You want to hold your wiener into a woman and you accidentally make a baby, someone said you you have brought it upon yourself and you just have to deal with. So it's "tough beat hombre", look forward to be a single dad the next 20 years. This would not be more suppressive than making abortion illegal, or what do you think?
Maybe this would even soften the bondage and misery women suffer with being forced to birth a child in a sense of cosmic justice or whatever. I'm not a big believer in cosmic justice so let's ask, how do we deal with 9 month of involuntary bondage and misery? How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?
> We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice.
I think this would be a completely satisfactory outcome in a world where abortion is considered murder. And regardless of cosmic justice, it would be a more fair outcome in some sense as the burden of child rearing is at least nonzero for both parties.
> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?
This is the tough question. Your proposed solution of legally burdening the man with the child post birth seems fine. Or any other division along the line between man and women.
I think the major issue I am internally trying to resolve is where does humanity start? I'm not much a fan of laws that are time or tech variant, meaning that laws enacted today that say a fetus is human when it can survive outside the womb have the potential to be walked back to the moment the egg accepts the sperm, as at some point in the future it's probable we'll have tech to non-invasively extract the fertilized egg and grow it to maturity artifically.
But if the law makes a hard cutoff, what is it? Is there a difference between a 1 day fetus and a 10 day or 100 day or 270 day? If so, what is it materially?
I think the US has some places where heartbeats are the defining factor, which is something like 6 weeks. Seems kind of sensible from the outside, but considering the week counting is based on the last missed period, that basically gives only about two weeks to get an abortion done after being able to confirm one is pregnant if one is being vigilant. That's a tough timeline. This also excludes the complicatiom of how such laws would be applied to IVF or other involuntarily fertilizations.
Personally, I think I fall along the lines of "I probably would not personally get an abortion but also don't quite think the government should be able to step in and disallow others from doing so." I'm a big fan of negative rights, so that seems pretty aligned to me. It also seems to satisify your goal of allowing us to meet in the middle in what I would hope is both a respectible and satisfactory way for an educated society that tries to maximize individual liberty.
My solution violates the "treat abortionists as murderers" ideal for which I was arguing, but I was arguing from the viewpoint of a society in which that is the concensus. I fully recognize that such a society is not necessarily one in which I would prefer to dwell.
Edit: I did kind of veer away from my congruence of abortion and murder. To specifically answer your question under such a pretense:
> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?"
The answer here is likely abstinence. No woman is forced to bring a child to term in the absence of a child. Therefore the only fair solution would be for people to abstain from sex unless the outcome of a child was acceptable. This applies fairly to both men and women regardless of whom must raise a child that is conceived.
> It does if A always comes at the expense of another person C. Morality only via the sacrifice of others isn’t belief, it is control and punishment.
Hypothetically [0], if someone saved another person from being murdered by a close relative would that count as proving to you their morality system is based on freedom and forgiveness?
And if they are “saving” a terminally ill patient who wanted to go peacefully rather than continuing to endure pain and suffering? So if you are suggesting that walking in, saving someone, then walking away feeling good about yourself while not caring about the pain and suffering you may have inflicted on that person by your actions is justification of morality, I’d say that is just as equally a disgusting of a display of selfishness at the expense of others. Since we are making up hypotheticals, we might as well use this one that is more similar to what happens in reality.
I think that framing makes the argument vacuous. If an action is framed as murder, how would OP defend in the first place? Any argument would be tough to carry. It would be arguing against a tautology. You are right to mention how the "debate" here is people asserting their arguments.
What I find most tough to carry is the consequent: there are ~600,000 (rough number of abortions per year in USA) people "murdering" their own "children" every single year. I suppose in the process of putting their faith in god these people have removed all their faith in humanity...
Again, vaccinations and pronouns directly affect more than a handful of people. Each abortion affects only the individuals involved.
Furthermore, hypotheticals are all fine and good, but society exists the way it does right now. The argument is only difficult to carry in a society where unwanted children have a reasonable chance at basic outcomes. That is not the world that we live in: what you are actually arguing is against a mercy killing, or expecting the baby to pull themselves up by their nappy-straps (they almost universally can't/won't). "Mercy killing" is brutal, I know, but it's not my beliefs that have established a world (and continue to push the world further towards) such a place where dying in the womb is a more merciful outcome.
Make hope more universally accessible and I'll have a much more difficult time with my argument. I am not carrying my argument, it is the broken state of society that is.
If you view the fetus? embryo? as a human life, then abortion doesn't just affect the person having it, but also the life being aborted. Not only that, but what are the moral implications to the rest of society if "murder" is allowed?
I must be misunderstanding because that seems like the most common morality basis in the world. People who equate running over a squirrel in the road to vehicular manslaughter (as if you had hit a human child) are seen as extremists, and someone who was OK with hunting deer as well as humans would be seen as having some sort of mental condition. The majority view is that species matters
I’m all aboard for that when it is something that exists in our world as the same species rather than a collection of DNA. It’s a miracle that must be protected for about 9 months until it’s then fine to die in a gutter as long as we punish the parent after, all because we need to respect that one collection of DNA happened to hit and another collection of DNA and therefore multiplied. Further, the claimed examples of “protection” were only examples of things resolved by punishment, not protection, which is telling about what goal is truly fundamental.
> It’s a miracle that must be protected for about 9 months until it’s then fine to die in a gutter as long as we punish the parent after
I think the entire reason the parent is punished is because it is not okay for a child to die in a gutter...
> all because we need to respect that one collection of DNA happened to hit and another collection of DNA and therefore multiplied
People don't experience spontaneous conception. The one collection of dna hitting the other is the result of a deliberate act of both dnas' owners [1].
In the scenario in which a fetus is regarded as a child, abortion is obviously equivalent to murder. It is death of a human against their volition by another.
The interesting future to me, policy-wise, is what happens when we have the ability to extract fetuses from mothers and grow them to maturity artifically? Will society determine that abortions are a no-go at that time since literally all fetuses can be saved without impact to the mother in excess of an abortion operation, or will society state that mothers must be allowed to murder [2] their children?
[1] Ignore rape, incest, etc. for argument's sake because we're discussing the freedom between men and women.
[2] Remember this scenario equates abortion to murder. I am not espousing personal beliefs. My username was chosen when I was contemplating suicide, not due to religious leanings.
I'm pro commenting, but let me play devil's advocate.
If you view leaving a comment as murder, then commenting doesn't just affect the person partaking in it, but also the life of everyone reading the comments. Not only that, but what are the moral implications to the rest of society if "murder" is allowed?
Here's is my point though: if you assume something is murder, of course you will conclude that it is bad. There's no "Devil's advocate"—or for that matter—any argument at all to be had. The entire debate revolves around the assumption you simply asserted for "Devil's advocate".
Well if we go to an even more extreme degree with the devil’s advocate thing: what is the difference between an ~4 month embryo (or any cutoff after which miscarriage becomes very unlikely) and a newborn?
Either of them isn’t a real person, neither is fully conscious. Sure a newborn can feel pain but infanticide can be done in a humane way. What we are depriving from the newborn is the opportunity to live and experience the rest of its life but the same applies in both cases.
And in a quite a few ancient societies infanticide was fully acceptable (killing slightly older children was generally not) and used as a somewhat safer alternative to abortion.
> Well if we go to an even more extreme degree with the devil’s advocate thing: what is the difference between an ~4 month embryo (or any cutoff after which miscarriage becomes very unlikely) and a newborn?
From a practical perspective, giving up the newborn for adoption is significantly easier than the 4 month embryo - it's already been carried to term and birthed. And quite a few humans, correctly or otherwise, feel a lot more 'ick' around the idea of infanticide vs. abortion. But they also feel a lot more 'ick' around late gestation abortion too - most states have had gestational limits around abortion. Very few have had none. (Many of those with gestational limits do have exceptions around health/safety issues for the mother, or significant medical issues with the fetus, etc.)
It's kind of a strange argument because most of the US did accept the premise that at a certain point in the embryo's development abortion becomes less acceptable. I can't speak as definitively for the rest of the world, but a cursory google shows that the situation is quite similar - most countries that allow for abortion have gestational restrictions.
> world, but a cursory google shows that the situation is quite simila
IIRC US is quite permissive in that regard? 12-14 is generally standard across much of Europe while in US that’s generally viewed as quite restrictive?
Why so snarky? It's pretty clear cko understands that and is trying to convey your exact point to the person they responded to (who made the opposite assumption)
>abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).
Strong disagree. They affect at minimum 2 (potentially 3 depending how you define life/person) by default. Both the parents are impacted by the choice either physically, emotionally, financially, and responsibility.
Situations where the two parents conflict on this choice are common and the power is incredibly asymmetrical and can/does lead to abuse.
>The contract being common decency. Vaccinations are part of that contract (it affects others), pronouns are part of that contract (they affect others), abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).
You say it only affects those having the abortion (ie, female), I was pointing out that there is AT MINIMUM the other parent involved, and there are tons of arguments a person could make about it impacting a much larger portion of people due to the societal/social impact this option brings out.
So I would go as far as to include medical professionals, but not the other parent? For lack of any actual argument, you've turned to such a degree of pedantry that it changes the spirit of what I said. Not that your pedantry adds anything to the discussion one way or another.
The problem is that the "spirit" of what you said was pretty confusing.
You seemed to imply that a social contract requires people to take actions they may not want to do because by not taking those actions, they impact "others" and then said abortion doesn't fall into that because apparently that "others" group is so small it doesn't count as "others"?? Yet you included people using incorrect pronouns to an INDIVIDUAL... so your entire argument feels pretty arbitrary.
The pedantry response was to hopefully make you realize that your argument was arbitrary, I had hoped you'd come to that on your own - but here we are.
The female has asymmetrical power in this situation regarding the two parents.
Example:
- Most pro-choice supporters would support the female deciding that she was too young to become a mother and terminating a pregnancy not because of any medical reason, but because of the changes to her life it would cause (ie, "I'm not ready to be a mother yet"). This same option is not available to males. If the female has decided to keep the child, the male in most countries is now automatically bound to this decision and generally, at least financially, will have their life impacted even if they have the same reasoning (ie, "I'm not ready to be a father yet"). Alternatively, if the female has decided to terminate and the male desperately wants the child, there is no recourse.
I say asymmetrical because the results/responsibility of the decision are forced to be shared, however, the power to make said decision lies only with a single party.
I do not propose a solution here or make a judgement I'm simply pointing it out because the person I replied to made it sound like this decision is a simple and doesn't impact others.
I for one reject your social contract and despise the self-righteousness of people who think a social contract overrides personal liberty.
You want others to partake in your social contract, but you would probably be appalled if that contract demanded people not be overweight (affects others wherever healthcare is in limited supply), or maybe the contract demands people not be gay (lowers birth rates and therefore societies GDP… also increases disease transmission). Social contracts come and go with time and yours is as wrong tomorrow as my proposed one is today
Not signing the contract simply means having no right to the protections that it affords. I have no responsibility to treat you with respect if you don't go out and vaccinate yourself. I have no responsibility to entertain traditions that you value, if you don't value the traditions of others.
You have attributed a loss of liberty to it, from the comment that you are replying to:
> You are free, of course, to not "sign" that contract - but that means that those who have are not obligated to apply it to you.
Participate in the social contract, or don't, your choice.
Traditions have nothing to do with it. In America we have liberty and your worldview is not compatible with our constitution. Wars have and will continue to be faught to preserve my version
Personal liberty is fine, until it starts infringing on my own, which these include. You don't want to vaccinate? You being infringing on my ability to stay healthy while participating in society. Vaccines aren't fully effective, not everyone can be vaccinated, etc., so to eradicate disease we rely on the majority of people getting vaccinated.
You not using my preferred pronouns or name is simply a rude thing to do. If we remove the bizarre political fixation on it, if I tell you my name is John and you call me Joanna just because you think I look more like a Joanna, you're an asshole. I'm not in favor of making being an asshole illegal, but I will call you one.
I'm actually fully OK with there being consequences to being overweight! It does put a large burden on the healthcare system. Right now the healthcare system is largely privatized so, well, it's not like public health is the primary concern for it anyway, but if it were, sure I believe that there should be actions taken to reduce obesity. We have a lot of promising anorectic medications right now, primarily in the form of the GLP-1 and related medications, and I'd be in favor of overweight and obese people needing to also go on these if they want access to public healthcare for issues that are related to metabolic disorder, etc. But we're in a privatized system, so...
You're starting to really stretch the argument thin with the gay bit, though. Disease transmissions here still requires the informed consent of both parties - I'm not going to get HIV from a gay person without having some form of consensual sex with them, outside of behaviors that are already criminal - rape, contaminating something I'm eating with their semen, etc. This isn't the same as refusing vaccination and then participating in society for diseases that are transmissible like covid or ebola or similar. For birth rate/GDP, we do not enforce actions on straight couples when it comes to childbirth (or STDs, which while transmission rate is generally lower for some STDs for heterosexual intercourse it's obviously not exclusively limited to homosexual intercourse) so these suppositions seem to be targeted based not on the general outcome but simply on the fact the person is gay. If we started mandating child birth for straight people for whatever reason, then we can start having this conversation - but even in a fairly dystopic world where we are requiring married couples have kids, we can still provide options for gay people. Require them 'sponsor' an additional child for a straight couple, require them adopt, require surrogacy and them raising a child, etc. But targeting them just because of their sexual orientation would be quite obviously bigoted.
"Social contract" is a made up term used to legitimatize government intervention, i.e. statist by nature, and built upon violence. It is a myth used to justify state coercion and centralized authority.
> A society is certainly conceivable in which there was no governmental intervention in family life or education and in which the sole function of law enforcement was the upholding of universal rights.
I am in favor of "common decency, mutual respect, live and let live".
That is not what "social contract" is about (unless you keep playing the redefinition of words game, which many people do when arguing in favor of "muh social contract"), and no, we do not need the Government for that.
What is liberty? Is it freedom from vaccinations, or freedom from getting vaccine-preventable diseases?
Is it freedom to carry a gun, or freedom from getting shot?
Is it freedom to pollute, or freedom from pollution?
Is it the freedom to pay as little as possible, or the freedom from others pushing their tragedy-of-the-commons cost onto me?
Is it freedom to choose the ideal healthcare plan for me, or freedom from spending hours deciphering healthcare mumbo-jumbo and ending up in medical debt if you get it wrong?
Liberty is subjective and opinions differ. The social contract is society's collective détente.
Liberty is indeed subjective, but unless it is rooted in a consistent framework of consent and non-aggression, it risks becoming a mere euphemism for majority rule or state coercion. The social contract, if used to justify that coercion without consent, becomes problematic. Liberty should not mean trading one form of oppression for another under the guise of collective benefit. The social contract is a fraud: no one ever signed it, and the State enforces it at gunpoint. True contracts require explicit, informed consent - not mere residence in a geographic territory. Thus, the invocation of a "social contract" often becomes a rhetorical tool used to justify state coercion without genuine agreement.
Freedom to own a weapon is not equal to freedom to commit violence.
Pollution is an invasion of property rights, and should be treated as such under the law - i.e., as a tort or nuisance, actionable by the victims. In other words, pollution should be punished - not because the government says so, but because it constitutes an aggression against another's property.
Liberty means non-aggression and voluntary interaction.
Each of those has sects that do not follow the talking point you're putting forward. If it isn't clear to them, then by what right do you get to declare the truth for everyone else? Go debate some more, before trying to unilaterally rule for all mankind.
For most of it's history Protestantism did not take any specific issue with abortion and considered it a weird Catholic thing similar to their views on birth control. It wasn't until the 1960s that this shifted, largely due to political machinations.
Islam typically sides with people doing what they have to to live, including eating pork if that is what it takes to survive. In regards to abortion, the mothers life takes paramount.
Case in point, quit waving your religious dogma in my face. Its not wanted. I've no desire, and quite frankly, absolutely no need, to be careful what I bet on in terms of beliefs. Anything that requires belief without proof meeting even the most meagre bar height is nonsense.
Since you seem to be giving others here a hard time about Abrahamic ideas of belief, hell, and morals, I'll leave you with a quote from your own book:
Matthew 6:1: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
I'm not sure why people get religious about this. The far more interesting approach is to try to use reason along side other current laws to determine the answer to two questions - what defines a human life, and when is it acceptable to take one? For example, trying to compare things like medical support for preterm babies to medical support of coma patients to investigate the logic behind viable fetuses vs various life support methods, etc.
I didn't say anything; I'm not the person you were replying to. But I will say that I suspect your arguments that God has the authority over a document people wrote is, again, unlikely to find an audience among those who don't think He exists.
Many things in life are traumatic. Me leaving the Catholic church was traumatic for my parents. My years-long girlfriend cheating on me was traumatic for me.
Does trauma for the 1% outweigh the benefits of the 99%?
Did I say that it does? The post above mine asked if it mattered. It matters, but it is one factor among many that goes into family planning or sexual relationships.
The target group may well be strongly biased towards failures resulting in children born. Using birth control for, well, being in control.
And we lack data on how bad messing with RAR regulation really is.. too much confounding effects from how bad deficiency & over-supplementation are on the mother.
There is a hormone-free option for men today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-based_contraception. It's not widely known but has solid science backing it up and even though the wikipedia article claims no long term studies were done, in the 1930s IIRC there was a series of tests done in India and it had men conceive healthy children after a couple of years of using this method. And there have been other long term studies suggesting the same absence of long-term effects if anyone is interested I looked them up a while ago and could go looking for the links.
Could also positively affect offspring if spermatogenesis is blocked at the right step, stopping the gamete progenitors from accumulating somatic mutation. The majority of rare genetic diseases arising from de-novo mutations has its origin in the fathers gamete formation (with increasing risk (i.e accumulation of mutations) at older paternal age). Maybe this could block/slow down this process (i.e cell division) and in 20 years all males that still may want to have kids will take a RARα blocker.
It's not hard to set up nearly fault proof routines and reminders.
For example, I have a pill container for the days of the week. Pills go directly into my pocket and don't come out unless they're going in my mouth (almost always during breakfast.) The pocket to mouth routine makes sure I don't set them down somewhere and the pill box gives proof later that I took them.
Only tangentially related really but almost all of the variance I have ever observed in ability to remember things like this is just trying at all to use a mnemonic or routine.
The above routine is a specific practice to remember something — I basically think it would be effective for anyone that actually did it, and almost all non-adherence would be at step zero.
This is why it won’t succeed. The person getting pregnant is going to want some proof that the contraception is being used properly. And that means something that they can see or something that they do themselves.
That's a solid argument for why a male birth control pill won't substitute for a female birth control pill.
But I don't think it needs to in order to succeed. For women, the stakes are higher. For men, they're still high enough. There's no reason both people can't be on the pill. Yes, it's a bit redundant, but when your goal is safety, redundancy is usually good.
"Trust me, babe, you won't get pregnant because I'm on the (male) pill!" is going to be tough sell in the bedroom. But "guys, control your own fate with a once-daily pill!" will be an easy sell in the inevitable TV ads.
I don't want to get someone pregnant. If I can take a pill to largely ensure this is the case, I'm going to take a pill.
Hell, if I'm engaging in casual sex, I'm going to take both the pill and wear a condom. I've had condoms break and not notice it immediately - thankfully never at the point where I've reached climax, but I could see it happening.
Anecdotal polling from my peer group strongly suggests you are wrong. Every guy I know would rather be responsible for taking an equivalent pill than the woman taking it. Every single one of us has experienced one or more women who missed taking the pill a day here or there and those women weren't that concerned about it. As an add-on (depending on jurisdiction), women have the backup of the abortion decision whereas men do not.
You don't think men worry about having a kid with someone they don't want to, being responsible for 18 years of child support, making hard decisions about whether they want to be involved in the kid's life, etc.?
Men are terrified of getting someone pregnant. At least women have a choice as to what to do about it. If they don't want to keep it, they don't, assuming the law permits it or the law is easy to get around. Men don't ever have that choice.
Cabergoline. Lowers prolactin which peaks after ejaculation. Can reduce or eliminate the refractory period. Problem is there is risk of significant cardiovascular side effects, including valvular disease. And they appear to be cumulative: the more pills you take, the higher the risk.
Men would literally invent and take untested meds instead of using all-natural, granted to them from birth "climax-extra-hard-multiple-times" button in their anus, smh.
As a man who loves anal stimulation and the climaxes I get from it, and does it rather often, I've never managed to have multiple orgasms that way. I assume this is because I haven't managed to orgasm purely from the prostate stimulation and needed to also stimulate my penis, which causes me to hit the refractory period.
Do you have any tips or links on ways to have the orgasms you describe here?
Uhh this is important because the onus and health risks of contraceptives have been entirely shouldered by women. Not because a very low percentage of men have been “coerced” into fatherhood.
There’s lots of comments in this thread on the risks of cancer and this and that risk with male contraceptives. meanwhile, these are already real issues women have to consider when using modern day hormonal contraceptives. The discourse in this thread is so dude-centric tone deaf.
Discussions around pregnancy, childbirthbirth and raising children are very gynocentric and minimising men.
They are disregarding men having to face a disproportionate economic burden paired with lower (often, NO) rights to have a say. For example, even if they desire abortion, women can force men to pay alimony. Another example would be the common paternity testing prohibition, allowing women to plant cuckoo children as they see fit.
Pharmaceutical contraception for men gives then back their reproductive rights.
I believe when they report this, they're talking about whether there has been an unplanned pregnancy over the course of a year with either typical use or "perfect" use. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
What would that look like? Women complain it's unfair they have to be responsible for birth control in relationships. Now there's the ability for men to shoulder the responsibility too. Will voters, male and female, be ok with not taking the egalitarian path? Obviously governments are concerned about falling birthrates but they already have shown a willingness to continue policies that get them re-elected, even at the expense of birthrates.
I hope you replied to the wrong comment, I don't think women complaining about paying for birth control is a valid reason for sterilizing a population. Also condoms exist.
While there are complaints about cost depending on location, most of the complains are about the side effects of the pill, which women endure and men don't.
> would highly doubt this pill will eliminate tradeoffs
I would, too. But it increases the pool of options, which means that for some people it really is a win-win. Get the same as you’re getting now, but with fewer (or less meaningful to you) side effects.
Really? It seems like there's already plenty of non-reproductive sex happening! Leaving aside condoms and non-PIV sex acts, there are lots of women on birth control, men who have vasectomies, post-menopausal women, and infertile people in the world, who could certainly have lots of unprotected sex without any reproduction. Those people seem way better off than heroin addicts!
In a better world it would be sensible to allow the guy to split without child support and so on if he didn’t want the child, but in the real world that would end up hurting a lot of people and birthing lots of kids into poverty. Whether you think that’s worth it is up to you.
Abortion as a right is thinking of abortion as a medical procedure that people have the right to access. Universal access, but men don’t tend to utilize it.
It really is an important thing to be able to manage pregnancy. Pregnancy is exceptionally brutal on the body and causes innumerable permanent changes. I think it makes sense as an emergency fallback when other preventative methods fail.
I recognize that kids in poverty is not a desirable outcome.
That said, I'd also point out that 18 years of child support (which many states assign as an uncapped percentage of the man's income - not based on what it actually costs to feed, clothe, house, and support a child) is exceptionally brutal on the finances and causes permanent financial loss that many men never financially recover from.
That is not a desirable outcome either - especially for high-income men who may end up risking child support payments in excess of the total gross income of the average person.
Telling men they can have EITHER financial security in this one area of their life OR sex - but not both - is not fair to men.
Imagine if the roles were reversed. Imagine a man telling a woman that if she doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, she shouldn't be having sex. He'd be eviscerated online, almost certainly fired immediately, probably doxxed and SWAT'ed or subject to other forms of harassment and threats - it is unthinkably offensive to even suggest that women must choose between the right to have sex and the right to be free from the risks of pregnancy, right?
So why the double standard? Why is it okay to give men this kind of ultimatum, but not women?
The double standard is because of the difference in practical consequences. I’m inclined to agree with you on principle, but it would be extremely harmful in practice. I think the move is to change society so that it would be less harmful, eg provide tons of government support to parents.
If the consequences for following through with a poorly-planned pregnancy are so tragically high for the children, why do we not simply restrict and have licensing requirements for the privilege to have children?
We use the power of the state to protect kids from alcohol, drugs, tobacco, mature content, etc. Why not use the power of the state to protect kids from poverty?
We don't let people operate automobiles on public roads, forklifts, practice medicine, sell insurance, manage investments, perform plumbing work, become a teacher, or even become a surveyor, an interior designer, or a hairdresser in many states without an evaluation of their competency and license from the state, why should the ability to become a parent be treated with less scrutiny than the ability to become a hairdresser or an interior designer?
If harm reduction is the primary operating principle here, isn't the unrestricted ability to have kids in direct opposition to that goal? There are objectively wrong and dangerous/harmful ways to parent (physically abusing kids, starving them, emotionally neglecting them, etc) just as there are objectively wrong and dangerous/harmful ways to operate a car (not following speed limits, not following traffic control devices, reckless driving), no?
Why is it perfectly fine for the state to restrict someone from selling insurance on the grounds of harm reduction, while there are no state restrictions whatsoever on parenthood?
Two points. The first is that harm reduction is what I want, but not necessarily what the state wants or what others want. Many want the state to promote stability, even if the world made stable involves a lot of harm. Objectively, a primary motive of the state is to maintain itself, since if it didn’t maintain itself it wouldn’t exist. Harm reduction is something the state has to be pushed and dragged into doing and there isn’t enough will to do so imo.
The second point is that what you’re asking for may cause more harm than it prevents by putting us one step away from a eugenics policy. Deliberate suppression of minority populations could (and would) be done by subtly adjusting the criteria people would need to meet to be approved for having children without the majority of the population taking notice. I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea if it had no misuse, but I’m certain it would be misused.
I want to clarify that I'm bouncing around policy ideas here, not making impassioned calls for specific policy positions.
Your concerns about state-sanctioned racialization / eugenics are certainly valid and historically supported.
I'd answer your call to give parents money with a question though - what money? The US, at the federal level, already spends trillions more than it collects each year, and now over a trillion dollars a year on interest payments, too. I don't believe we can just keep borrowing to infinity, consequence-free forever.
It also raises a question of needs prioritization. Do parents need that help more than homeless people do? What about bright but underserved kids from urban communities who might have the cognitive horsepower to become doctors but lack the financial means? What about foreigners living in far worse conditions than what we consider "poverty" here, like child slaves forced to mine toxic rare earth minerals in Africa?
I would argue that money to reduce child poverty and deprivation is one of the best, highest priority uses of money because it preempts many of the other issues that develop later as a consequence of material deprivation, lack of opportunity etc. In terms of affordability, I believe the covid child tax credit cost about 100 billion and achieved marked results. 100 billion isn’t a small deal, but if we raised taxes by 1-2% on households making around 200k+ it would cover it, which seems entirely worth it.
Considering we allow women to have abortions for arbitrary reasons, which include financial and any other non-medical, a paper abortion for men would make things a lot more equal.
If the man wants the child, and the woman doesn't, the man "loses" - the child gets aborted.
If the man does not want the child, and the woman does, the man "loses" - he is forced to pay child support.
I have brought this up to feminists who have tended to respond just like the above: "if men don't want the financial risk, then they shouldn't be having sex", but that is itself a sexist sentiment that indirectly and unintentionally conveys the idea that women should have the "right" to have sex without having to worry about the financial risks of raising a child (women can always elect to abort if an unwanted pregnancy occurs - well, at least until recently in some states that are a bit backwards on women's rights), but that men should not have that same right (men should either remain sexless or be forced, at gunpoint by the state if necessary, to bear the financial costs of siring a child - men have zero rights, zero say, zero influence, zero protection if an unwanted pregnancy occurs).
I believe everyone should have the same rights. Women should be able to have sex without having to worry about being coerced by the state to bear the financial costs of raising an unwanted child. Men should also be able to have sex without having to worry about being coerced by the state to bear the financial costs of raising an unwanted child.
The current situation creates a power imbalance where women who do want children can financially railroad their male sex partners who do not want children.
If it is not fair to force a woman to raise a child she does not want, why is it fair to force a man to pay for raising a child he does not want?
Telling men they can have EITHER financial security in this one area of their life OR sex - but not both - is not fair to men.
Imagine if the roles were reversed. Imagine a man telling a woman that if she doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, she shouldn't be having sex. He'd be eviscerated online, almost certainly fired immediately, probably doxxed and SWAT'ed or subject to other forms of harassment and threats - it is unthinkably offensive to even suggest that women must choose between the right to have sex and the right to be free from the risks of pregnancy, right?
So why the double standard? Why is it okay to give men this kind of ultimatum, but not women?
>You do the crime, you do the time. Don't want kids? Don't have sex.
If having sex with someone who isn't on the same page as you about having kids is a "crime", why are women (almost) always exonerated from the consequences while the men are (almost) always guilty and (almost) always forced to bear the consequences? Why the double standard?
And for what it's worth: I am firmly pro choice. The solution to inequality is ALWAYS to increase the rights of the "losing" side of the power imbalance, NEVER to take rights away from the "winning" side.
> Both mice and non-human primates fully regained fertility after stopping the drug. Mice regained fertility within six weeks, and non-human primates fully recovered their sperm count in 10-15 weeks.
Great recurring source of revenue for the drug company!
Though I'm more interested in feral animals like dogs. It looks like this drug may work on dogs too? If so, it would be a huge boon for cities and villages in India.
There's already a permanent and cheap dog contraceptive. It's called neutration.
The problem in places that have feral dog problems isn't the lack of a contraceptive, it's lack of funds, skilled vets, or (and I think this is the main one) political and cultural will to get it done.
I'm not sure why India is getting singled out here, lots of places around the world have a dog problem. India might have the largest number of strays on paper but only because it's huge.
Wtf? This is ridiculous. Who the fuck is going to be giving feral dogs a pill everyday? And why would you want a reversible contraceptive for feral dogs? You want a one-and-done irreversible one, which neutering is.
If it could be mixed into dog food it could be fairly easy to use. You'd just have to feed stray dogs for a decade or two and have the problem mostly solved. With added benefit of stray dogs being less of a nuisance if they are getting a bit domesticated by feeding them regularily.
So you think that it's more feasible to obtain thousands of pills and have someone give pills to stray dogs daily than it is to have a vet visit the village once?
Having people go out and give a pill to feral dogs daily or near daily seems like a waste of time. Just go out and shoot them, or capture them and put them down. Its a cheaper and more permanent solution.
> In male mice, the drug caused infertility and was 99% effective in preventing pregnancies within four weeks of use.
I don't know if they mean 99% reduction compared to normal or 99% of mice did not cause a pregnancy. Either way this does not mean that every intercourse has a 1% chance of causing a pregnancy.
Also you are assuming an unconditional probability. It could very well be a conditional probability. It might completely work for 99% that do not cause any pregnancies at all and not work for 1% that cause pregnancies as without the drug.
Anyway I am looking forward to getting the perl index for humans from clinical trials.
With the female contraceptive pill 0.3% of women get pregnant within a year if taken perfectly (which is rarely the case, but the figure here is also from lab conditions). This drug leads to 1% pregnancies in 4 weaks, which is much worse.
That said this is still great news especially as the condom is also much less safe then the female contraceptive pill.
Condoms are extremely effective also, if used perfectly, which is rarely the case. Statistics should be based on real-world experience not theoretical best case.
Mostly misuse. The studies are all nonsense AFAIK, they rely on the participants to use the condoms correctly, which predictably doesn't happen. Problems the studies mention, like slippage and breakage are the result of misuse, probably due to choosing the wrong condom size.
The only reason for a properly used condom to not work would be a manufacturing defect, which should be extremely rare, certainly not 2%, that's plainly ridiculous and immediately disqualifies any study that claims so.
The statistics are based on real world experience rather than theoretical best case. Not to pick on you but really surprised to hear people confidently express so much misinformation on this topic when it's not even particularly hard to find information on it:
What throws me off about this, is it's not difficult to use perfectly. Condoms are the only method I trust. Pull-out? Can screw it up. With birth control you're (until now) relying on your partner to use it perfectly.
This would make it a lot harder... they can already do that with their own pills, after this, they would have to find an exact match for the men's pills and somehow replace them without the guy noticing, which would be realatively harder.
You guys are reading from my comment some sort of aggressive anti-pill stance that isn't there. I'm just predicting something that will happen, because predicting the future and seeing if reality later plays out that way is fun.
Whoops, you’re right! I read the article and then some comments that were (I see now) tangentially related. Stuff got jumbled up, and I confidently posted something incorrect.
What is the purpose of this comment? This is reporting on a phase 1 trial, which is when side effects and potential toxicity are evaluated. Of course there are no known side effects yet, that's what the trial exists to identify.
This is one of the annoying things about life. Testosterone effectively already does this and is quite safe. It's just that society is not comfortable with men taking steroids for no particularly good reason.
Taking outside sources of testosterone permanently alters your body's ability to make testosterone naturally, to the extent that many people who previously took steroids find they have be on testosterone therapy for the rest of their lives.
I wouldn't call "creating a lifelong requirement to take artificial hormones in order to function at your previous baseline" qualifying as "no particularly good reason".
Most people who go on Testosterone can go off it just fine. Here's a random study:
>Ever since that study, testosterone has undergone extensive clinical trials as a hormonal method of male contraception and many have found testosterone to be efficacious, reversible and safe with minimal short-term side effects
To be clear, the snippet you quoted is your study summarizing the claims of other studies which are among the cohort analyzed.
Let's quote the short, succinct conclusion of the study you picked:
> Testosterone therapy is a contraceptive, albeit a poor one. Men of reproductive age with low testosterone should be counseled on the adverse effects of TRT on fertility. Obtaining a semen analysis and possible cryopreservation of sperm should be offered if TRT is prescribed to men interested in preserving fertility. Options such as clomiphene citrate and hCG along with a referral to a reproductive urologist should be considered to naturally increase testosterone levels in those men with low testosterone who want to avoid TRT.
Whether a contraceptive that is sufficiently irreversible that men using it are advised to freeze sperm if they ever want kids should be considered "reversible" is left as an exercise to the reader.
You're misunderstanding what they're saying here. They are saying TRT will have an impact on fertility while they are on TRT. The prospects for when they go off TRT are fine:
>If a patient currently desires fertility, TRT should be avoided or discontinued immediately. A semen analyses should be performed if the patient has discontinued TRT. Azoospermia or severe oligospermia may be seen in these patients, but most men should return to baseline semen analyses in 6 to 9 months after cessation of TRT [13,14,15]. A 2006 integrated analysis showed that 90% of patients were expected to return to baseline sperm concentration values 12 months after cessation of treatment and 100% after 24 months [50].
I'm not misunderstandings, you are conflating several different things: TRT, testosterone as a contraceptive, and testosterone as a body building steroid.
TRT is a very low dose of testosterone, used to supplement the body when it doesn't produce enough. It is reversible as you say, and has a negative effect on fertility but not enough to be reliably effective as a contraceptive at TRT dosages.
Testosterone as a contraceptive or steroid is a far higher dose. This is the one that has permanent effects.
This is what I mean. Why is everyone so weird about it? It's hormonal birth control for men. Even if it works for only 65% of them it's better than nothing since it can be tested to see if it's working easily.
According to Sapolsky, testosterone amplifies current behaviors. If you’re already aggressive, you become more. If you’re already X, it amplifies. Just because it’s safe doesn’t mean people want to be in affected states permanently.
Roid rage is probably a myth. The causation likely goes the other way. Meaning aggressive people are more likely to use steroids than steroids are causing them to be aggressive:
While I disagree with your claim that steroids are a viable form of birth control, I do agree a bit with this, though not for the stated reason.
What many people don’t realize (probably in large part because they see testosterone and estrogen as diametrically opposed things) is that testosterone levels impacts estrogen levels. Why? Because the body produces estrogen through the aromitization of testosterone. Increasing testosterone will increase estrogen.
A common struggle for those on TRT (both those at true replacement levels, as well as those taking supraphysiological doses) is elevated estrogen. I know that when my estrogen levels have gone too high, I become more neurotic than I usually am.
If you couple increased neuroticism with an elevated sense of dominance (especially at bodybuilding doses), and top that off with a general lack of poor management of one’s emotions (which I suspect is common amongst bodybuilders), what you likely get is a very volatile person. Not because of testosterone, but because of the elevated estrogen and their existing psychological issues.
I agree, and not even just that, it is associated with hair loss, among many other things. In fact, psychiatric medications are less effective (sometimes completely) if your T is high.
I’m on TRT, without hCG. I went and had a vasectomy a year ago. Because I’m weird and infinitely curious, two or three days after the procedure, I took three samples per day, and looked at each under the microscope. What I saw put to shame just about any video I could find online of a “good” sperm sample. Straight laser beams, zipping from one side of the slide to the other. If you were to scale Micheal Phelps down to these swimmers, he’d stand no chance. And the concentration was ridiculous, too. And this all 2-5 day old (at least) sperm!
I was curious about the mechanism.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-025-00752-7
> YCT-529 works by interfering with vitamin A signaling necessary for sperm production and fertility.
> The importance of dietary vitamin A and retinoid signaling for male germ cell development and differentiation has been recognized for many years6. All trans-retinoic acid (Fig. 1a) is an active metabolite of vitamin A that exerts its function, at least partly, by binding to retinoic acid receptors (RARs). The RARs α, β, and γ, are encoded by the Rara, Rarb, and Rarg genes in mice, and Rarα and Rarγ have been validated as contraceptive targets by genetic knockouts resulting in male sterility7,8. Notably, the effects on spermatogenesis in the absence of RARα most resemble the loss of RAR signaling in vitamin A deficiency, and the mice are otherwise normal7,8. Further, the effects on spermatogenesis in animals treated orally with the dual RARα/RARγ antagonist BMS-189453 (Fig. 1a, b) closely phenocopied the absence of RARα function. Importantly, the resulting male sterility is reversible9,10,11. We, therefore, wished to identify RARα−selective inhibitors for potential male non-hormonal contraception. Our study describes the development of YCT-529, a highly selective RARα antagonist that reduces sperm counts in mice and non-human primates. Mating studies with male mice treated with 10 mg/kg/day for 4 weeks show that YCT-529 is 99% effective in preventing pregnancies and that the mice fully regain fertility after drug cessation.
This raised concerns in my mind. Retinoids are associated with birth defects, so they'd have to make sure there isn't crossover of the drug to the woman and that it wouldn't cause these problems.
Shouldn't be an issue if the contraception is doing it's job since the retinoids are only a risk while taking them while pregnant. I also doubt semen contain retinoids or any rel level of vitamin A.
It wouldn't be an issue if it were 100% effective.
We had alpha-blockers for a long time now, which prevents ejaculation but not orgasm; read: it can completely block the emission phase of ejaculation, while orgasmic function is retained.
Example: Silodosin.
You need to experiment with it. Sensitive clinical trials measured rates as high as 90-99%.
It is entirely non-hormonal. It does not affect libido (rarely), while hormonal male contraceptives do, and it is reversible upon cessation, without any delay, unlike hormonal male contraceptives.
Closer to 90%, and generally the side effects are a bit annoying too. Circulatory ones. Sometimes even to floppy. (Like 1% dosage dependent)
Plus the thing does not stop the drip so you do have to pull out sooner rather than later or else. It does not stop sperm production.
Also dry ones tend to result. They're sometimes uncomfortable.
Tamsulosin is I believe the modern one but all of them are for long term. Probably least side effects.
Otherwise if taken as a single dose fresh, side effects like orthostatic hypotension are vastly increased.
Circulatory side effects like dizziness or orthostatic hypotension do occur, though they tend to be mild and dose-dependent.
You're right that it doesn't stop sperm production, just emission. As for "the drip"; that's pre-ejaculate, which doesn't contain sperm inherently, but can pick up residual sperm in the urethra from a prior ejaculation.
And that's true, anejaculatory orgasms can feel strange or less satisfying for some, but it is not universal.
> Otherwise if taken as a single dose fresh, side effects like orthostatic hypotension are vastly increased.
That is true.
Edit: I / We will have to research the side-effect profile and mechanisms of the mentioned pill (in the submission). I have not yet done so. They mention no side-effects but it might be too early to tell.
> You're right that it doesn't stop sperm production, just emission. As for "the drip"; that's pre-ejaculate, which doesn't contain sperm inherently, but can pick up residual sperm in the urethra from a prior ejaculation.
I’d like to stress that point a bit.
I had a vasectomy about a year ago, and being the weirdo that I am, I figured I’d see how much sperm remained in my ejaculate (and for how long) after the procedure.
I waited maybe two or three days after the procedure, and then for the next three days, I’d collect three samples per day and take a look under my microscope. In the first four or five samples, the swimmers were swimming hard. Told my brother (who had been trying for a kid for a couple years, and had observed his own samples trying correlate diet and other factors to improved motility) about the straight laser beams I was seeing in the scope — he nearly had a fit when I described how long it took them to go from one side of the slide to the other under the given magnification.
It was the ninth sample when there were very few observable sperm, and what remained looked kinda drunk and unmotivated.
All of that to say: if you’re going to get a vasectomy, when your doctor tells you to abstain from condom-less/birthcontrol-less sex until you come back for a sperm count, take that seriously. It’s amazing how motile they are even when kinda old, and also amazing how many hang around downstream of the vas deferens after many ejaculations. And, while rare, sometimes the vas deferens do manage to reconnect.
And a bonus tip along these lines: testosterone replacement, even without hCG, is not a reliable form of birth control. I’m on (and was on) TRT, without hCG, and the concentration of sperm under the scope looked higher than any YouTube video I could find at the same magnification (meanwhile my bro is taking silly amounts of hCG and struggling). I hear a lot of people joke about TRT having the beneficial side effect of infertility, but that’s far from a certainty.
Relatedly, this is also why the “failure” rate for vasectomy isn’t vanishingly close to 0%: it’s almost all dudes having unprotected sex in the first month or so after the procedure.
Spontaneous reconnection happens but is extremely rare. If you can follow the doctor’s orders for a few weeks, vasectomy’s failure rate may as well be 0%.
What's the mechanism for that? Maybe a few sperm are stuck in the sperm ducts past the point they were severed, but the ducts are cut and sealed, aren't they? Even if they weren't sealed, it would be Russian Roulette trying to get across the gap in what's effectively just body cavity space.
My expectation would be the first sample might have lower but significant sperm count, and each subsequent sample would decrease dramatically until any residual sperm died and the count was zero. You're talking about motility, not count, but it doesn't sound like you noticed a drastic decrease from sample to sample. That doesn't seem right according to my understanding.
Well, to be clear, I didn’t actually count the sperm, as I was more interested in a rough, qualitative (rather than rigorous, quantitative) observation.
That said, yeah, the relative amount of sperm didn’t drop off noticeably at the offset. And I think that kind of makes sense: as someone with a relatively short refractory period, let’s suppose I ejaculate two or three times in 5 minutes: I doubt (though I could be wrong) that my body actually evacuated all of the seminal fluid (and fully replaced it) each time. I would bet there’s simply a bunch “left in the tank”. Would be interesting to hear from a urologist (or someone with similar expertise).
Thank you for sharing this!
> And that's true, anejaculatory orgasms can feel strange or less satisfying for some, but it is not universal.
I would have been ok with less satisfying but it felt horrible, like it was going somewhere else instead of coming out. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone
> Both mice and non-human primates fully regained fertility after stopping the drug. Mice regained fertility within six weeks, and non-human primates fully recovered their sperm count in 10-15 weeks.
Hard pass on messing with my fertility like that, too, TBH.
You realize female birth control drugs have the same lingering effect on fertility too right?
What exactly is your point? I have already stated my preferred methods, none of which involve hormonal birth control pills. Moreover, I have never attempted to persuade or pressure anyone into using such medications.
In relationships, mutual understanding and compromise are essential. I fully acknowledge that certain decisions come with trade-offs. For example, I would not hesitate to take Silodosin and deal with its potential side effects if it benefited the relationship. I would expect the same level of consideration in return (reciprocity), but that does not equate to coercion or irresponsibility.
My position remains unchanged: I would avoid hormonal contraceptives for myself, and I do not advocate their use by others. My preferred approaches are non-hormonal and do not carry such implications (as I have stated in previous comments). That said, I believe that in a committed relationship, some level of shared sacrifice or compromise is not only inevitable, but necessary.
Given that, I fail to see how your point is relevant to the context of our discussion. If your intention was to imply that I expect others to make sacrifices I would not make myself, then I outright reject that assumption. Mutual responsibility, respect, and voluntary compromise are foundational to any relationship I engage in, coercion has no place in it.
If this conversation is shifting from an exchange of ideas to personal insinuations, I see little value in continuing it further.
Thank you. :)
Edit:
"I would avoid hormonal contraceptives" -> "I would avoid hormonal contraceptives and pills affecting fertility in the aforementioned ways".
> clinical trials measured rates as high as 90-99%.
This is in the same range as, like, pulling out, for what it's worth.
I have always been amazed at how effective the pull out method was. I had sex for years with my wife and always pulled out. 2x a week for probably 10 years. After we decided to have a kid, she was pregnant in a month.
Really incredible how effective such a simple solution is
I haven’t pulled out in 25 years. What’s the point in sex if you can’t keep going to completion?
Completion can mean many different things for different people.
What's the point? Well, the other 99% of the experience and all its pleasure, intimacy and sensation adds up to a lot more than those few seconds of ejaculation.
Not sure what you mean. It is to completion, you pull out right before completion and finish immediately outside. It’s all about timing.
Apologies for tmi
Yeah same experience as that, and being a bit more careful around fertile times of her cycle.
Was completely effective for us.
To be fair, I think most normal people in a relationship use this method, but if you tell people on the Internet about it, they get upset for some reason.
Most normal people? The implied judgement aside, that is wildly untrue. Most people (80+ % who are not trying for a child) use birth control, this is an easy stat to look up. Maybe people “get upset” because you’re making things up?
I'm not saying it's a very common method (maybe, maybe not), but cycle timing is often included in "birth control" stats and used as a secondary measure with other forms of birth control.
You can just look up these numbers, of various forms of birth control. That exclude cycle timing.
And none of them say it’s “most people”. Perhaps some unmeasured population uses it as a secondary method, that’s total speculation and kind of beside the point
Are we (or the grandparent) talking most people at one point in time, or most people at any time during their life? If it's the latter, then I do think it's a valid claim, but I haven't seen any stats that cover those sorts of numbers. Eg have more than 50% of people in a committed relationship never used the timing method? Most of the couples I am good friends with have used the cycle timing method when they want another kid, want to delay it, but are open to having one sooner. This is also commonly combined with secondary measures, such as condoms, pulling out, or even abstinence during the fertile window (why measure cycle timing if you're not changing your behavior, using another method, based on the observation).
The 80% using contraceptive methods stat includes pulling out as a contraceptive method.
no, this doesn’t seem to be the case. more than 80% of those avoiding pregnancy use condoms, pill, tied tubes, vasectomy, iud, etc… this 80% does not include withdrawal. [0]
5.8% rely on withdrawal.
[0] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-method-u...
The 80% claim must include withdrawal, because their claim is that the population not using any method has only a 15% non-pregnancy rate within a year. But withdrawal has a much higher 80-96% rate of non-pregnancy within a year.
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-unit...
> Sexually active couples who do not use any method of contraception have approximately an 85% chance of experiencing a pregnancy over the course of a year.
Therefore, withdrawal is a method of contraception.
the 80% does not include withdrawal. the numbers are here [0].
80+% rely on things like pill, condom, tied tubes, etc...:
23.9: tube ligation/implants
16.4: pill
13.2: condom
12.0: iud
8.50: vasectomy
2.6: implant
2.1: injectable
1.2: vaginal ring
.4: patch
80.3% rely on the contraceptions listed above.
The remaining rely on: withdrawal, emergency contraception, family planning, etc...:
5.8%: withdrawal
2.6%: family planning
0.2%: emergency contraception
0.2%: other
11%: no method
the 80% does not include withdrawal.
[0] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-method-u...
[flagged]
To be fair, that isn’t correct at all.
i could be misinterpreting what you mean by “most normal people” but it’s a wildly strange use, most people who aren’t seeking pregnancy use some form of contraceptive [0], the pill, condoms, etc… it’s almost 90% of sexually active and its been this steady since 2002.
> … who were not seeking pregnancy, 88% were using a contraceptive method in 2016, and this proportion has remained steady since 2002.
it seems most normal people are using contraceptives.
> …they get upset for some reason
im sure very few people are “upset” about this. are you misinterpreting someone correcting your overestimations as if they’re being upset?
[0] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-unit...
Pulling out counts as a contraceptive method for that stat.
oh, indeed, thanks. only like 5.8%. and only 2.6 rely on family planning. more than 80% are using pills, condoms, iud, vasectomy, etc.
again, “most normal people” are not relying on pulling out. most people, by a significant amount, are relying on other methods.
Couples using this method tend to be mostly fine with any "failure". They might want a child but not now, or are not completely sure but would do their best if it happens.
Couples who clearly don't want children typically have already discussed their stance in the couple and will be way more thorough about birth control. That's typically not the demographic that will YOLO it, so I guess you'd get much more pushback on that front ?
I agree and want to add that the scenarios you point out could also be for a single couple at different points in time. Risk tolerance changes over time with different circumstances.
What? This is the definition of anecdotal evidence. It’s not very effective at all in practice, statistically.
> For every 100 people who use the pull out method perfectly, 4 will get pregnant.
> But pulling out can be difficult to do perfectly. So in real life, about 22 out of 100 people who use withdrawal get pregnant every year — that’s about 1 in 5.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/withdr...
These are not hard stats to look up.
> For every 100 people who use the pull out method perfectly, 4 will get pregnant.
Are those 4-in-100 distributed randomly?
Did the pregnancies result despite 100% adherence to the method, or was there occasional failure to adhere?
There's a big difference between a method being ineffective from the perspective of a health care provider, and a method being ineffective in absolute terms.
A provider has to care about what broad cross sections of people will actually do, rather than what they say they will do.
If you're an individual person who knows they can adhere to the method perfectly, the fact people on average cannot or will not adhere perfectly has no particular relevance to you.
I have no horse in this race, but the same difference in the meaning of "efficacy" arises in all sorts of aspects of health care, like advice on diet and exercise, or the prescription of specific exercises for physical therapy.
I’m sure the majority of individuals practicing think they can be/are perfect adherents. Statistically they are wrong.
some are likely correct, however
The stats are not hard to look up, but they do seem somewhat hard to gather. The site you linked doesn't reference a study, but I imagine that asking a bunch of people if they pulled out "perfectly", even for quite stringent definitions of "perfectly" will result in quite a lot of variance.
I'm not trying to no-true-Scotsman birth control methods, just pointing out that it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions when all you have is people's word.
So, it can be very effective but a whole lot of people apply it terribly and stupidly.
Everyone assumes they’re the smart one applying it “right”. Statistically they’re not.
96% efficacy is pretty good; more or less on par with condoms.
The similarity is not the same.
If no semen is emitted, the chance of pregnancy is null (more about it in my other comments).
Plus 90–99% suppression of ejaculation has been recorded and suggested that it has a potentially high contraceptive efficacy, so that is way better than withdrawal.
Experiment, maybe it affects you in a way that you get 99%, which would make it a very efficient hormone-free male birth control pill.
Side-note: personally I prefer IUDs, and/or a medication that has been extensively studied, so this pill can wait.
The "as typically used" quoted figure for pulling out ("withdrawal") is 80% success, but the ideal use figure is 96-98%. If you know a little bit about yourself and also aren't going back to back without peeing, you can do a lot better than the 80% figure. (Also yeah, it's amusing that both of these figures are more or less identical to male condoms.)
(Meta-comment: probably best to keep everything in "success" percentage figures for direct comparison, instead of switching to failure percentages for some figures.)
I edited my comment.
Yea similar with tracking ovulation dates. Seems like pretty bad EV for messing with my nervous system.
Retrograde ejaculation is a weird thing to experience. It's the physical manifestation of the sound of a slide whistle both ways.
Alpha blockers also give one hell of a stuffy nose. Worst sleep ever after taking one.
If it's never ejaculated, what happens to the fluid?
The body has several well-regulated mechanisms for handling it.
If semen isn't ejaculated, the body reabsorbs the sperm in the epididymis and recycles the cellular material. Seminal fluids, which are produced during arousal, are either reabsorbed or, in cases like retrograde ejaculation (e.g., with alpha-blockers), pass into the bladder and are later urinated out. The system self-regulates; there's no harmful buildup to worry about. :)
So, TL;DR: You will just urinate it out in our case.
I wonder if this leads to higher risk of prostate cancer, as an inverse to studies on relatively frequent ejaculation lowering prostate cancer risk.
From what I gathered, it does not appear to have an impact on prostate cancer risk since the prostate still undergoes stimulation and fluid production, and the contents are still expelled.
Silodosine-induced retrograde ejaculation does not prevent ejaculation from occurring, it simply redirects the pathway (different anatomical exit).
It is different from chronic ejaculatory abstinence.
What do you think happens with a vasectomy? It gets reabsorbed.
With a vasectomy, you still ejaculate. Most of the fluid in an ejaculation comes from the prostate, which isn't affected by severing the vas deferens
Hmm, I wonder if it's really unaffected. Have they found a mechanism for the small but statistically significant increase in prostate cancer rates related to vasectomy?
Vasectomies don't prevent ejaculation. The semen is just sperm-free (after a brief period of time).
Preventing ejaculation sounds awful.
As compared to ... unplanned pregnancy?
As compared to, why have sex if you don’t finish ?
As they said, it still allows orgasm, but with no ejaculation.
I can't believe I'm typing this on hn and it's not meant to be funny but ...some people like ejaculate
Lmao, yeah. I mean it is entirely up to the couples. I personally do not care which method they choose, whatever works for them.
You’re really hung up on this aren’t you
Not having sex is a great birth control yes, but birth control is for sex to be safe not to remove it entirety
it's been a few decades, but i don't recall sperm in seminal fluids being entirely limited to the grand finale, only mostly.
Sperm is virtually entirely absent from pre-ejaculation fluids if you've peed since the last time you ejaculated. Almost all of the "sperm can be in pre-ejaculate" effect is from having sex a second time in a row without anything flushing out the tubes.
Fair, and it needs clarification to avoid conflating pre-ejaculate, seminal plasma, and sperm emission.
It may be confusing, so to clarify: "seminal fluids" is a term typically used to refer to the fluid released during ejaculation, not throughout the arousal phase. The idea that sperm would be in the mix before the emission phase goes against standard reproductive physiology.
Sperm are only actively introduced into seminal fluid during the emission phase of ejaculation; the so-called "grand finale." :D. Before that, in the arousal phase, the fluids released (like pre-ejaculate) typically contain no sperm unless there's residual contamination from a previous ejaculation.
It's funny that residual contamination, in the right context, might lead to the world's best magic - life.
I know, especially if you think about it! It is indeed "magic", to me, too. :)
(And FWIW, if one might wonder: thankfully this aforementioned "residual contamination" poses no health risk or birth defects.)
It's not. I think johnisgood and loeg both know this, but they're being dangerously simplistic in some of their replies.
If you recognize emission — not just when expulsion is imminent — and if you pull out and that's the end of vaginal intercourse until you've cleared the urethra again, then that's probably nearly perfect at preventing pregnancy.
So its like a dry orgasm pill? How is that not huge, does it affect the refractory period?
Take it a step further into 'Demolition Man' territory to get the orgasm without any physical contact. Certainly would be good for reducing STDs though no doubt would come with a whole range of societal impacts.
In all honesty, orgasm without physical contact is entirely possible already (mental orgasm / psychological stimulation), but it is not common and not easy.
Fantasy, meditation, hypnosis, Kegel exercises... They could lead to orgasms and sometimes even ejaculation (which would be bad in this case).
Some medications rarely may cause spontaneous orgasms, even, without physical contact, arousal or stimulation.
We're basically there with VR porn and ever more realistic toys.
Not parent but made a comment to parent, and damn, completely forgot about that! You are right.
Paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-025-00752-7 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43585950)
First off, this thread seems to bring out the most "reddit-like" posts on HN. If you've come here to shoot a funny one-liner comment, please reconsider - the point is discussion, not karma farming.
Now, on the topic itself - I really wonder about the safety profile of these. While this selectively inhibits only RARα and is thus "biased" towards mostly acting on testes, it could also have side-effects - and while the effect might not be pronounced yet, with long term use it definitely could be, especially if all the RARα receptors get inhibited (will beta and gamma pick up the slack? what is it going to cause?).
Considering the 99% effectiveness claim and the method of action, I wonder if the embryos in that 1% case can even survive.
1) Long-term effects are surely a topic but as with female birth control and the risks connected to it, as well as female-male couples where the female has an incompatibility with birth control, the male partners might take the risk of using it
2) Does it matter if the embryo will survive even in the 1% case? Somebody who uses birth control would not want a child anyway, right?
2) but it can still be very traumatic. Miscarriages are traumatic. Getting abortions is traumatic.
And many people are opposed to abortion for moral reasons.
As they have the right to…for themselves.
This is absolutely the most critical point.
Contraception should be readily available for those that want it. Abortion should absolutely and definitevely be available for those that want and need it. There are far too many opinions connected to religious dogma, both consciously and unconsciously, that seek to deny women and couples access to abortion. Even the damned bible offers up instructions on abortives and how to use them, but this seems to be glossed over by hand wringing people who want to insert their rosaries into women's ovaries.
That quickly breaks down when you apply it to some of the recent culture war topics. For instance:
* as it relates to vaccine mandates: "As they have the right to…for themselves.
* as it relates to calling people by their preferred pronouns: "As they have the right to…for themselves."
Of course, both issues are far more nuanced than a simple "As they have the right to…for themselves" can refute, but so is abortion. You can't take complex issues and take potshots at them with one sentence comments.
It's all so much more simple than that. It boils down to a social contract.
The contract being common decency. Vaccinations are part of that contract (it affects others), pronouns are part of that contract (they affect others), abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).
There is no nuance at all. You are free, of course, to not "sign" that contract - but that means that those who have are not obligated to apply it to you.
The anti-abortion "argument" (everyone on all sides are really just asserting things because there doesn't appear to be anything to argue about) is that abortion is murdering a child.
If someone accepts that frame, would you attempt to argue that there is no social contract to protect the lives of children? That seems like a tough argument to carry.
Unfortunately, that argument tends to break down almost immediately after birth, so “protecting the children” becomes a cheap catch-all excuse for selective engagement. Defunding education, defunding school food, defunding numerous programs that actually protect children in favor of cash in their pocket. Morality sold cheaply or abandoned for convenience, except when forcing their will on others, especially if it only affects someone else.
Did you narrow down that topic to American conservatives? I'm not familiar with your politics but that doesn't sound familiar in context of my country.
Also, this is whataboutism. If someone cares about A but not enough about B, it doesn't mean that A is not a good thing.
Of course this predicates that there are differences between A and B. The GP is, I believe, making the point that claiming to protect unwanted unborn children (A) when campaigning for anti-abortion regulation is just a power-play to dictate a lifestyle choice, if it does not follow up with protecting the unwanted born children (B). I think, there is merit to this.
Observations shows that most societies forbid woman to throw their unwanted born child into a garbage bin, so if you claim that women are or should be as free as men in their lifestyle choices, where does that leave the woman? Either you need birth control to prevent that situation, or a social security network that takes care of the unwanted child after the fact. In my simple, male mind this should be a given. Otherwise, if I were a woman, I would refuse sex. The ancient Greeks have a funny story about that [0].
Of course, you can also say that women aren't allowed to be as free as men in their lifestyle choices. And I think, I'm not going too far out on a limb when I say that's actually at the bottom of this issue. Some people think it is OK to make women less free than men in the service of their ideals, while others think it is not. Resolve this tension and you will make progress.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata
Can you help me understand how criminalizing abortion makes women less free than men?
It sounds like your premise is that women have less freedom in personal choice than men when abortion is not available. Presumably this is because men can walk away from a child while women are physically bound to them. Do I have that correct?
If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy. Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.
I would also contest that men aren't totally free of sexual consequence. If they do happen to impregnate a woman, they can be forced to pay child support while the child is a minor.
The "abortion is murder" argument also doesn't totally meet the GGP's premise necessitating A and B. That is, if society is unwilling to provide a safety net for born, unwanted children, no contradiction exists if society also refuses to allow abortion. This just means society does not allow murder. After all, a society that does not provide a safety net does not explicity allow the murder of poor people. Just as a society that disallows murder does not necessarily have to provide nourishment via the government.
> If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy.
Financially also. In America, child birth will set you back 10-15k insured or 30-50k uninsured. Who pays for that? The woman who has been unable to work due to the debilitating condition that late stages of pregnancy is for most woman?
> Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.
That doesn't deal with what happens to the child. I assume the GP comment is concerned with "pro-life" vs "pro-birth." Many self-proclaimed pro-lifers actually advocate for birth, not life.
> Financially also. In America, child birth will set you back 10-15k insured or 30-50k uninsured.
Source? This Forbes article shows <$3k mean out of pocket costs. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/how-much-doe...
I had a baby 3 months ago. It was nowhere near $10-15k, and for some completely unknown reason to me and my spouse the hospital applied a 75% needs-based discount. I'm not even sure if we hit the total out of pocket max for the year, but even if we did the cap is only roughly $6k.
> That doesn't deal with what happens to the child. I assume the GP comment is concerned with "pro-life" vs "pro-birth." Many self-proclaimed pro-lifers actually advocate for birth, not life.
Birth is life.
True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder. But there are plenty of adoption agencies, etc. that exist. Plenty of non government orgs that exist. It is unlikely a child will die of hunger, especially in a developed country.
And if there are no people willing to adopt the child with which the new mother is burdned? Tough. Maybe consider that when one engages in sex. But in a society that views abortion as murder: murder is murder. Having flippant sex and then murdering a child to prevent raising it should probably be at least equated to voluntary manslaughter. Sure, you didn't mean for the situation to arise, but your previous decisions resulted in the outcome nonetheless.
It seems the push for treating abortion as non-murder is really a push for a world in which sex and babies are decoupled. But just as sex and disease cannot be decoupled except through careful planning and purposeful engagement, neither can sex and babies.
A woman who is pregnant is tagged by society with "mother". The man who leaves is not. Legally yes, but socially not.
The mixer who abandoned her child is "a mother who abandoned her child". The father is not even in the picture.
I would live to live in a world where the rational words cubby, but culture, history, religion is still very strong.
And I live in France, love of the most free countries in the world in this regard.
> Can you help me understand how criminalizing abortion makes women less free than men?
Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?
> It sounds like your premise is that women have less freedom in personal choice than men when abortion is not available. Presumably this is because men can walk away from a child while women are physically bound to them. Do I have that correct?
Your presumption is partially correct.
> If so, women are really only physically bound to the child through the pregnancy. Once the child is born, the woman can give it up for adoption and be done with it forever.
They are also less free because such a law -- even if only for the time of pregnancy -- prescribes a lifestyle with very limited choices. Ignoring that the physique of a pregnant woman makes some things mostly impossible, thus making the woman less free, I also guess anti-abortionists are not in the habit of applauding pregnant women who drink and smoke while stage-diving on a heavy metal concert. And while this is hyperbole I assume you get my drift.
> I would also contest that men aren't totally free of sexual consequence. If they do happen to impregnate a woman, they can be forced to pay child support while the child is a minor.
But would you accept that men are mostly free? For example, where's the woman in child support? Do the men have to pay the woman 9 month+ for pain, puking, limited lifestyle choices, and possible health consequences, too? Or how about strapping an additional 100g of weight to the man's belly for each week of the 40+ weeks of pregnancy? While we are at it, let's give him a good kick in the stomach once or twice a day for that time. What about the misery you feel when you are forced to do something you don't want to every waking and sleeping minute? You know, its not like a job where you are done and go home at 5 p.m. These arguments about money treat women as unfeeling delivery machines, nothing but cattle really, which in itself not only makes them less free, it makes them less than men.
> The "abortion is murder" argument also doesn't totally meet the GGP's premise necessitating A and B. That is, if society is unwilling to provide a safety net for born, unwanted children, no contradiction exists if society also refuses to allow abortion. This just means society does not allow murder. After all, a society that does not provide a safety net does not explicity allow the murder of poor people. Just as a society that disallows murder does not necessarily have to provide nourishment via the government.
Leaving aside the question if the removal of a lump of cells that can not be sustained outside of a woman's womb is homicide, let alone murder, in any meaningful sense, I am happy to engage with your premises.
So, the society you paint does not care about the child or the woman, it cares about murder. That's technically fine (the best kind of fine) if you are honest about it. Opponents to abortion in that society do not claim they care for children or women. Because, again according to your premises they don't, they just want that no murders happen. So nobody cares about the children, thus there is no inconsistency, which is great. It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.
Frankly, I would be shocked if anybody would think that would be fine, but the premises and line of argument you offer would allow just that.
> It follows that this society should be fine with the woman, or anybody really, leaving the unwanted newborn on a park bench where is dies from starvation or weather, because that's not murder.
I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."
If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.
That said, I do not think a contradiction is introduced if the same society treated exposure as murder. In fact, it is similar to removing a clump of cells that cannot live outside the womb: purposeful death through exposure. It seems similar to murder if person A locks person B in a room and provides no food or water. Eventually person B starves, which would likely be seen as murder.
> Imagine there would be a law that disallows men to cut their hair, but allows it for women. Who would be less free here?
I think our main clash is in how we treat fairness. Of course your proposed hair-cutting law would be unfair. Both men and women exist such that it can be applied. Abortion is inherently asymmetric: men cannot get pregnant. [1]
As such, the law has two options: write it in such a way that 1. outcomes can be completely fair (or as close as possible given the biological differences) or 2. write laws that are tailored to the asymmetry of sexes.
(1) Provides a solution where abortion is allowed. The outcome must satisify the condition that both men and women can walk away from a pregnancy without burden.
(2) Recognizes that men, being incapable of bearing children, must be held accountable for their actions somehow, and monetary damages are probably the most fair way to provide compensation. Maybe the damages need to be increased when compared to current US society, but alternative solutions like forced marriage or forcing the man to be in proximity to help a women through pregnancy probably lead to less free outcomes.
Given the two choices, constrained by a society that equates abortion to murder, (2) is the only valid choice. Yes, there is an enormous burden physically, mentally, financially for the women. Given a deadbeat father, the only way to help the woman is by penalizing him enough financially to try and relieve these burdens as much as possible.
This is why I would suggest that, in such a society, both men and women make sexual decisions with careful forethought and premeditation. One should ask themself if they are prepared to birth or financially compensate their tango partner before getting on the dance floor.
[1] The asymmetry cuts both ways. Under prochoice laws, men cannot choose to have a child; all a man can do is impregnate a woman. Women get the only say in whether a child will be born, fairness be damned.
> I addressed this in the child of a sibling to your comment, "True, babies will die if not cared for, and that would be seen as a child abuse murder."
> If society wanted to define exposure to be non-murder, then there are no inconsistencies, as I think we both agree, just a strange society.
I think, the concept you are looking for is "negligent homicide", which is not murder. You can look it up. But this is just the same territory of discussion where we argue how many cells in a womb make a human being. It is pointless. You apparently have a loser understanding of murder and what makes a human being than I do and just as you will not convince me that a blastocyste is in any shape or form something that can be murdered, I will not be able to convince you that I'm right. So let's agree to disagree on this topic.
But since we have to live together in this society and being civilized and educated people, we can have a fruitful discussion on the topic of justice and fairness anyway. I happen to think your options do not exhaust the solution space, for example we could also reverse the responsibilities. We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice. You want to hold your wiener into a woman and you accidentally make a baby, someone said you you have brought it upon yourself and you just have to deal with. So it's "tough beat hombre", look forward to be a single dad the next 20 years. This would not be more suppressive than making abortion illegal, or what do you think?
Maybe this would even soften the bondage and misery women suffer with being forced to birth a child in a sense of cosmic justice or whatever. I'm not a big believer in cosmic justice so let's ask, how do we deal with 9 month of involuntary bondage and misery? How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?
> We could make the "enormous burden" you mentioned the man's burden by law, while the woman after birht washes her hands of the issue and lives a life of her choice.
I think this would be a completely satisfactory outcome in a world where abortion is considered murder. And regardless of cosmic justice, it would be a more fair outcome in some sense as the burden of child rearing is at least nonzero for both parties.
> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?
This is the tough question. Your proposed solution of legally burdening the man with the child post birth seems fine. Or any other division along the line between man and women.
I think the major issue I am internally trying to resolve is where does humanity start? I'm not much a fan of laws that are time or tech variant, meaning that laws enacted today that say a fetus is human when it can survive outside the womb have the potential to be walked back to the moment the egg accepts the sperm, as at some point in the future it's probable we'll have tech to non-invasively extract the fertilized egg and grow it to maturity artifically.
But if the law makes a hard cutoff, what is it? Is there a difference between a 1 day fetus and a 10 day or 100 day or 270 day? If so, what is it materially?
I think the US has some places where heartbeats are the defining factor, which is something like 6 weeks. Seems kind of sensible from the outside, but considering the week counting is based on the last missed period, that basically gives only about two weeks to get an abortion done after being able to confirm one is pregnant if one is being vigilant. That's a tough timeline. This also excludes the complicatiom of how such laws would be applied to IVF or other involuntarily fertilizations.
Personally, I think I fall along the lines of "I probably would not personally get an abortion but also don't quite think the government should be able to step in and disallow others from doing so." I'm a big fan of negative rights, so that seems pretty aligned to me. It also seems to satisify your goal of allowing us to meet in the middle in what I would hope is both a respectible and satisfactory way for an educated society that tries to maximize individual liberty.
My solution violates the "treat abortionists as murderers" ideal for which I was arguing, but I was arguing from the viewpoint of a society in which that is the concensus. I fully recognize that such a society is not necessarily one in which I would prefer to dwell.
Edit: I did kind of veer away from my congruence of abortion and murder. To specifically answer your question under such a pretense:
> How do we create a society where we do respect the women's liberty and rights and not force them to birth children through suppression by law, but make it the sensible and voluntary choice?"
The answer here is likely abstinence. No woman is forced to bring a child to term in the absence of a child. Therefore the only fair solution would be for people to abstain from sex unless the outcome of a child was acceptable. This applies fairly to both men and women regardless of whom must raise a child that is conceived.
It does if A always comes at the expense of another person C. Morality only via the sacrifice of others isn’t belief, it is control and punishment.
> It does if A always comes at the expense of another person C. Morality only via the sacrifice of others isn’t belief, it is control and punishment.
Hypothetically [0], if someone saved another person from being murdered by a close relative would that count as proving to you their morality system is based on freedom and forgiveness?
[0] Imagine my poker face.
And if they are “saving” a terminally ill patient who wanted to go peacefully rather than continuing to endure pain and suffering? So if you are suggesting that walking in, saving someone, then walking away feeling good about yourself while not caring about the pain and suffering you may have inflicted on that person by your actions is justification of morality, I’d say that is just as equally a disgusting of a display of selfishness at the expense of others. Since we are making up hypotheticals, we might as well use this one that is more similar to what happens in reality.
I think that framing makes the argument vacuous. If an action is framed as murder, how would OP defend in the first place? Any argument would be tough to carry. It would be arguing against a tautology. You are right to mention how the "debate" here is people asserting their arguments.
What I find most tough to carry is the consequent: there are ~600,000 (rough number of abortions per year in USA) people "murdering" their own "children" every single year. I suppose in the process of putting their faith in god these people have removed all their faith in humanity...
Again, vaccinations and pronouns directly affect more than a handful of people. Each abortion affects only the individuals involved.
Furthermore, hypotheticals are all fine and good, but society exists the way it does right now. The argument is only difficult to carry in a society where unwanted children have a reasonable chance at basic outcomes. That is not the world that we live in: what you are actually arguing is against a mercy killing, or expecting the baby to pull themselves up by their nappy-straps (they almost universally can't/won't). "Mercy killing" is brutal, I know, but it's not my beliefs that have established a world (and continue to push the world further towards) such a place where dying in the womb is a more merciful outcome.
Make hope more universally accessible and I'll have a much more difficult time with my argument. I am not carrying my argument, it is the broken state of society that is.
It's not a child at the 3th month mark.
I'm pro choice, but let me play devil's advocate.
If you view the fetus? embryo? as a human life, then abortion doesn't just affect the person having it, but also the life being aborted. Not only that, but what are the moral implications to the rest of society if "murder" is allowed?
So for some people it's not that simple.
Yet they often have no problem with destroying life that doesn’t share a common DNA sequence? An interesting morality basis.
I must be misunderstanding because that seems like the most common morality basis in the world. People who equate running over a squirrel in the road to vehicular manslaughter (as if you had hit a human child) are seen as extremists, and someone who was OK with hunting deer as well as humans would be seen as having some sort of mental condition. The majority view is that species matters
I’m all aboard for that when it is something that exists in our world as the same species rather than a collection of DNA. It’s a miracle that must be protected for about 9 months until it’s then fine to die in a gutter as long as we punish the parent after, all because we need to respect that one collection of DNA happened to hit and another collection of DNA and therefore multiplied. Further, the claimed examples of “protection” were only examples of things resolved by punishment, not protection, which is telling about what goal is truly fundamental.
> It’s a miracle that must be protected for about 9 months until it’s then fine to die in a gutter as long as we punish the parent after
I think the entire reason the parent is punished is because it is not okay for a child to die in a gutter...
> all because we need to respect that one collection of DNA happened to hit and another collection of DNA and therefore multiplied
People don't experience spontaneous conception. The one collection of dna hitting the other is the result of a deliberate act of both dnas' owners [1].
In the scenario in which a fetus is regarded as a child, abortion is obviously equivalent to murder. It is death of a human against their volition by another.
The interesting future to me, policy-wise, is what happens when we have the ability to extract fetuses from mothers and grow them to maturity artifically? Will society determine that abortions are a no-go at that time since literally all fetuses can be saved without impact to the mother in excess of an abortion operation, or will society state that mothers must be allowed to murder [2] their children?
[1] Ignore rape, incest, etc. for argument's sake because we're discussing the freedom between men and women.
[2] Remember this scenario equates abortion to murder. I am not espousing personal beliefs. My username was chosen when I was contemplating suicide, not due to religious leanings.
I'm pro commenting, but let me play devil's advocate.
If you view leaving a comment as murder, then commenting doesn't just affect the person partaking in it, but also the life of everyone reading the comments. Not only that, but what are the moral implications to the rest of society if "murder" is allowed?
Here's is my point though: if you assume something is murder, of course you will conclude that it is bad. There's no "Devil's advocate"—or for that matter—any argument at all to be had. The entire debate revolves around the assumption you simply asserted for "Devil's advocate".
Well if we go to an even more extreme degree with the devil’s advocate thing: what is the difference between an ~4 month embryo (or any cutoff after which miscarriage becomes very unlikely) and a newborn?
Either of them isn’t a real person, neither is fully conscious. Sure a newborn can feel pain but infanticide can be done in a humane way. What we are depriving from the newborn is the opportunity to live and experience the rest of its life but the same applies in both cases.
And in a quite a few ancient societies infanticide was fully acceptable (killing slightly older children was generally not) and used as a somewhat safer alternative to abortion.
> Well if we go to an even more extreme degree with the devil’s advocate thing: what is the difference between an ~4 month embryo (or any cutoff after which miscarriage becomes very unlikely) and a newborn?
From a practical perspective, giving up the newborn for adoption is significantly easier than the 4 month embryo - it's already been carried to term and birthed. And quite a few humans, correctly or otherwise, feel a lot more 'ick' around the idea of infanticide vs. abortion. But they also feel a lot more 'ick' around late gestation abortion too - most states have had gestational limits around abortion. Very few have had none. (Many of those with gestational limits do have exceptions around health/safety issues for the mother, or significant medical issues with the fetus, etc.)
It's kind of a strange argument because most of the US did accept the premise that at a certain point in the embryo's development abortion becomes less acceptable. I can't speak as definitively for the rest of the world, but a cursory google shows that the situation is quite similar - most countries that allow for abortion have gestational restrictions.
> world, but a cursory google shows that the situation is quite simila
IIRC US is quite permissive in that regard? 12-14 is generally standard across much of Europe while in US that’s generally viewed as quite restrictive?
Why so snarky? It's pretty clear cko understands that and is trying to convey your exact point to the person they responded to (who made the opposite assumption)
>abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).
Strong disagree. They affect at minimum 2 (potentially 3 depending how you define life/person) by default. Both the parents are impacted by the choice either physically, emotionally, financially, and responsibility.
Situations where the two parents conflict on this choice are common and the power is incredibly asymmetrical and can/does lead to abuse.
> Strong disagree. They affect at minimum 2 (potentially 3 depending how you define life/person) by default.
That's exactly what I said?
no - what you said is:
>The contract being common decency. Vaccinations are part of that contract (it affects others), pronouns are part of that contract (they affect others), abortions _are not_ (the only affect those having them, and potentially the medical professionals).
You say it only affects those having the abortion (ie, female), I was pointing out that there is AT MINIMUM the other parent involved, and there are tons of arguments a person could make about it impacting a much larger portion of people due to the societal/social impact this option brings out.
So I would go as far as to include medical professionals, but not the other parent? For lack of any actual argument, you've turned to such a degree of pedantry that it changes the spirit of what I said. Not that your pedantry adds anything to the discussion one way or another.
The problem is that the "spirit" of what you said was pretty confusing.
You seemed to imply that a social contract requires people to take actions they may not want to do because by not taking those actions, they impact "others" and then said abortion doesn't fall into that because apparently that "others" group is so small it doesn't count as "others"?? Yet you included people using incorrect pronouns to an INDIVIDUAL... so your entire argument feels pretty arbitrary.
The pedantry response was to hopefully make you realize that your argument was arbitrary, I had hoped you'd come to that on your own - but here we are.
People who oppose abortion usually consider abortion to affect 3 people, which probably influences their opinion on that topic.
Can you describe which asymmetry you mean?
The female has asymmetrical power in this situation regarding the two parents.
Example:
- Most pro-choice supporters would support the female deciding that she was too young to become a mother and terminating a pregnancy not because of any medical reason, but because of the changes to her life it would cause (ie, "I'm not ready to be a mother yet"). This same option is not available to males. If the female has decided to keep the child, the male in most countries is now automatically bound to this decision and generally, at least financially, will have their life impacted even if they have the same reasoning (ie, "I'm not ready to be a father yet"). Alternatively, if the female has decided to terminate and the male desperately wants the child, there is no recourse.
I say asymmetrical because the results/responsibility of the decision are forced to be shared, however, the power to make said decision lies only with a single party.
I do not propose a solution here or make a judgement I'm simply pointing it out because the person I replied to made it sound like this decision is a simple and doesn't impact others.
The social contract is "hack all the social contracts" and take decency hostage to trojan horse all the things
I for one reject your social contract and despise the self-righteousness of people who think a social contract overrides personal liberty.
You want others to partake in your social contract, but you would probably be appalled if that contract demanded people not be overweight (affects others wherever healthcare is in limited supply), or maybe the contract demands people not be gay (lowers birth rates and therefore societies GDP… also increases disease transmission). Social contracts come and go with time and yours is as wrong tomorrow as my proposed one is today
I have made a lengthy comment on the burden of obesity on our healthcare and people in general.
I have a radial nerve injury (and no text-to-speech) so I cannot find it right now nor re-write it.
I absolutely agree with you and your conclusions.
I made my reply here, from a slightly different perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43749123
> social contract overrides personal liberty
Not signing the contract simply means having no right to the protections that it affords. I have no responsibility to treat you with respect if you don't go out and vaccinate yourself. I have no responsibility to entertain traditions that you value, if you don't value the traditions of others.
You have attributed a loss of liberty to it, from the comment that you are replying to:
> You are free, of course, to not "sign" that contract - but that means that those who have are not obligated to apply it to you.
Participate in the social contract, or don't, your choice.
Traditions have nothing to do with it. In America we have liberty and your worldview is not compatible with our constitution. Wars have and will continue to be faught to preserve my version
So I am not free to engage in a contract with like-minded people? The constitution demands that I don't use pronouns?
That sounds like limiting speech.
Personal liberty is fine, until it starts infringing on my own, which these include. You don't want to vaccinate? You being infringing on my ability to stay healthy while participating in society. Vaccines aren't fully effective, not everyone can be vaccinated, etc., so to eradicate disease we rely on the majority of people getting vaccinated.
You not using my preferred pronouns or name is simply a rude thing to do. If we remove the bizarre political fixation on it, if I tell you my name is John and you call me Joanna just because you think I look more like a Joanna, you're an asshole. I'm not in favor of making being an asshole illegal, but I will call you one.
I'm actually fully OK with there being consequences to being overweight! It does put a large burden on the healthcare system. Right now the healthcare system is largely privatized so, well, it's not like public health is the primary concern for it anyway, but if it were, sure I believe that there should be actions taken to reduce obesity. We have a lot of promising anorectic medications right now, primarily in the form of the GLP-1 and related medications, and I'd be in favor of overweight and obese people needing to also go on these if they want access to public healthcare for issues that are related to metabolic disorder, etc. But we're in a privatized system, so...
You're starting to really stretch the argument thin with the gay bit, though. Disease transmissions here still requires the informed consent of both parties - I'm not going to get HIV from a gay person without having some form of consensual sex with them, outside of behaviors that are already criminal - rape, contaminating something I'm eating with their semen, etc. This isn't the same as refusing vaccination and then participating in society for diseases that are transmissible like covid or ebola or similar. For birth rate/GDP, we do not enforce actions on straight couples when it comes to childbirth (or STDs, which while transmission rate is generally lower for some STDs for heterosexual intercourse it's obviously not exclusively limited to homosexual intercourse) so these suppositions seem to be targeted based not on the general outcome but simply on the fact the person is gay. If we started mandating child birth for straight people for whatever reason, then we can start having this conversation - but even in a fairly dystopic world where we are requiring married couples have kids, we can still provide options for gay people. Require them 'sponsor' an additional child for a straight couple, require them adopt, require surrogacy and them raising a child, etc. But targeting them just because of their sexual orientation would be quite obviously bigoted.
"Social contract" is a made up term used to legitimatize government intervention, i.e. statist by nature, and built upon violence. It is a myth used to justify state coercion and centralized authority.
> A society is certainly conceivable in which there was no governmental intervention in family life or education and in which the sole function of law enforcement was the upholding of universal rights.
I would also refer you to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43748473.
https://store.mises.org/Myth-of-the-Social-Contract-Refuting... and https://cdn.mises.org/1_3_3_0.pdf and whatnot.
common decency? mutual respect? live and let live?
the government has a role in doing the most good for the most people. for example, keeping companies from dumping poison into rivers.
I am in favor of "common decency, mutual respect, live and let live".
That is not what "social contract" is about (unless you keep playing the redefinition of words game, which many people do when arguing in favor of "muh social contract"), and no, we do not need the Government for that.
https://www.academia.edu/7185307/Libertarianism_and_Pollutio...
https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-government-pollution-contro...
https://mises.org/mises-daily/libertarian-manifesto-pollutio...
Among others... Please do ask if you want to read more about it. I personally like to read a lot of things with what I disagree.
Please reply to the other person's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43748473), too, I wonder what you'd come up with. :)
Reading a bit of the first paper...
In a Libertarian system what the remedy is for people whose lands have been polluted?
And what about CO2 pollution the affects everyone everywhere, not just the local river? What's the remedy then?
And if I own a factory is it not personal liberty to make a profit with it even if it causes pollution?
> despise the self-righteousness of people who think a social contract overrides personal liberty
my reply to this bit is: Take your personal liberty to Libertarian Island.
That is fine if you do not care about your own liberty.
What is liberty? Is it freedom from vaccinations, or freedom from getting vaccine-preventable diseases?
Is it freedom to carry a gun, or freedom from getting shot?
Is it freedom to pollute, or freedom from pollution?
Is it the freedom to pay as little as possible, or the freedom from others pushing their tragedy-of-the-commons cost onto me?
Is it freedom to choose the ideal healthcare plan for me, or freedom from spending hours deciphering healthcare mumbo-jumbo and ending up in medical debt if you get it wrong?
Liberty is subjective and opinions differ. The social contract is society's collective détente.
Liberty is indeed subjective, but unless it is rooted in a consistent framework of consent and non-aggression, it risks becoming a mere euphemism for majority rule or state coercion. The social contract, if used to justify that coercion without consent, becomes problematic. Liberty should not mean trading one form of oppression for another under the guise of collective benefit. The social contract is a fraud: no one ever signed it, and the State enforces it at gunpoint. True contracts require explicit, informed consent - not mere residence in a geographic territory. Thus, the invocation of a "social contract" often becomes a rhetorical tool used to justify state coercion without genuine agreement.
Freedom to own a weapon is not equal to freedom to commit violence.
Pollution is an invasion of property rights, and should be treated as such under the law - i.e., as a tort or nuisance, actionable by the victims. In other words, pollution should be punished - not because the government says so, but because it constitutes an aggression against another's property.
Liberty means non-aggression and voluntary interaction.
If you want me to expand, please say so.
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If you prescribed to that particular facet of belief, that is are you problem. Don't try and push your dogmatic views down others throats.
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Each of those has sects that do not follow the talking point you're putting forward. If it isn't clear to them, then by what right do you get to declare the truth for everyone else? Go debate some more, before trying to unilaterally rule for all mankind.
For most of it's history Protestantism did not take any specific issue with abortion and considered it a weird Catholic thing similar to their views on birth control. It wasn't until the 1960s that this shifted, largely due to political machinations.
Islam typically sides with people doing what they have to to live, including eating pork if that is what it takes to survive. In regards to abortion, the mothers life takes paramount.
Case in point, quit waving your religious dogma in my face. Its not wanted. I've no desire, and quite frankly, absolutely no need, to be careful what I bet on in terms of beliefs. Anything that requires belief without proof meeting even the most meagre bar height is nonsense.
Since you seem to be giving others here a hard time about Abrahamic ideas of belief, hell, and morals, I'll leave you with a quote from your own book:
Matthew 6:1: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.
Do you have a soul? Do I?
You can indeed live a life in fear of holy retribution, but you do not have the right to force others to do so as well.
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I think trying to appeal to divine authority is unlikely to get you far with a group of people who reject divine authority.
I'm not sure why people get religious about this. The far more interesting approach is to try to use reason along side other current laws to determine the answer to two questions - what defines a human life, and when is it acceptable to take one? For example, trying to compare things like medical support for preterm babies to medical support of coma patients to investigate the logic behind viable fetuses vs various life support methods, etc.
A similar interesting situation is how in some cases murdering a pregnant woman counts as a double homicide because the law includes the unborn child
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I didn't say anything; I'm not the person you were replying to. But I will say that I suspect your arguments that God has the authority over a document people wrote is, again, unlikely to find an audience among those who don't think He exists.
Yes, and this is why the fact that hormonal birth control can be abortifacient is often downplayed, hidden, or denied.
Do you think we should do something about that?
what are those?
> Miscarriages are traumatic.
not if you're pro-choice, because you don't believe it's a human life in the first place.
Many things in life are traumatic. Me leaving the Catholic church was traumatic for my parents. My years-long girlfriend cheating on me was traumatic for me.
Does trauma for the 1% outweigh the benefits of the 99%?
Did I say that it does? The post above mine asked if it mattered. It matters, but it is one factor among many that goes into family planning or sexual relationships.
With medications, 1% chance of a traumatic side effect is indeed considered very serious.
The target group may well be strongly biased towards failures resulting in children born. Using birth control for, well, being in control. And we lack data on how bad messing with RAR regulation really is.. too much confounding effects from how bad deficiency & over-supplementation are on the mother.
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There is a hormone-free option for men today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-based_contraception. It's not widely known but has solid science backing it up and even though the wikipedia article claims no long term studies were done, in the 1930s IIRC there was a series of tests done in India and it had men conceive healthy children after a couple of years of using this method. And there have been other long term studies suggesting the same absence of long-term effects if anyone is interested I looked them up a while ago and could go looking for the links.
RARα pathway operates in cell development eg of blood cells and in apoptosis, implicated in some cancers.
Long-term safety seems doubtful. Offspring could be affected. In a rational world there would be no volunteers for the trials.
Could also positively affect offspring if spermatogenesis is blocked at the right step, stopping the gamete progenitors from accumulating somatic mutation. The majority of rare genetic diseases arising from de-novo mutations has its origin in the fathers gamete formation (with increasing risk (i.e accumulation of mutations) at older paternal age). Maybe this could block/slow down this process (i.e cell division) and in 20 years all males that still may want to have kids will take a RARα blocker.
Wouldn't it be simpler to bank sperm when a man turns, say, 18 rather than take a risk on what an unproven medication might or might not do?
Does this actually stop spermatogenesis, or does it just result in non-viable gamete production?
This is really good news...and a total surprise!
Hope this makes my fellow Americans reconsider science funding :/
Do their stats include the guy who forgets to take it every third day, or is that part of the 1%?
Like Richard Hammond said, if I was a woman, I'd be pregnant a lot.
I'm terrible at remembering to take pills. Maybe it's because they're pretty low stakes?
It's not hard to set up nearly fault proof routines and reminders.
For example, I have a pill container for the days of the week. Pills go directly into my pocket and don't come out unless they're going in my mouth (almost always during breakfast.) The pocket to mouth routine makes sure I don't set them down somewhere and the pill box gives proof later that I took them.
It’s not hard _for you_.
Only tangentially related really but almost all of the variance I have ever observed in ability to remember things like this is just trying at all to use a mnemonic or routine.
The above routine is a specific practice to remember something — I basically think it would be effective for anyone that actually did it, and almost all non-adherence would be at step zero.
This is why it won’t succeed. The person getting pregnant is going to want some proof that the contraception is being used properly. And that means something that they can see or something that they do themselves.
That's a solid argument for why a male birth control pill won't substitute for a female birth control pill.
But I don't think it needs to in order to succeed. For women, the stakes are higher. For men, they're still high enough. There's no reason both people can't be on the pill. Yes, it's a bit redundant, but when your goal is safety, redundancy is usually good.
"Trust me, babe, you won't get pregnant because I'm on the (male) pill!" is going to be tough sell in the bedroom. But "guys, control your own fate with a once-daily pill!" will be an easy sell in the inevitable TV ads.
I don't want to get someone pregnant. If I can take a pill to largely ensure this is the case, I'm going to take a pill.
Hell, if I'm engaging in casual sex, I'm going to take both the pill and wear a condom. I've had condoms break and not notice it immediately - thankfully never at the point where I've reached climax, but I could see it happening.
Exactly. I'm confident women worry a lot more about getting pregnant than men worry about getting someone pregnant.
Anecdotal polling from my peer group strongly suggests you are wrong. Every guy I know would rather be responsible for taking an equivalent pill than the woman taking it. Every single one of us has experienced one or more women who missed taking the pill a day here or there and those women weren't that concerned about it. As an add-on (depending on jurisdiction), women have the backup of the abortion decision whereas men do not.
You don't think men worry about having a kid with someone they don't want to, being responsible for 18 years of child support, making hard decisions about whether they want to be involved in the kid's life, etc.?
Men are terrified of getting someone pregnant. At least women have a choice as to what to do about it. If they don't want to keep it, they don't, assuming the law permits it or the law is easy to get around. Men don't ever have that choice.
I would agree for casual sex, but I don't think this stays true for committed relationships.
Do you ask woman for proof that they took their pills properly? Do they photo proof it daily to you?
I know plenty women who also forget to take it every day.
It's a mouse and NHP (non-human primate) study
Whoever invents a drug to eliminate male refractory period, will make all the money. All of it.
Cabergoline. Lowers prolactin which peaks after ejaculation. Can reduce or eliminate the refractory period. Problem is there is risk of significant cardiovascular side effects, including valvular disease. And they appear to be cumulative: the more pills you take, the higher the risk.
This is like removing the rev limiter on your engine. Your engine can now go beyond redline, but not for long because it melted itself.
Meh, there are people with low to no refactory period already and they don't seem to have any real issues.
Offset it with a restrictor plate.
restrictor + microtransactions -> profit!
"Insert coin to continue"
What? I was talking about restrictor plates from NASCAR.
Men would literally invent and take untested meds instead of using all-natural, granted to them from birth "climax-extra-hard-multiple-times" button in their anus, smh.
As a man who loves anal stimulation and the climaxes I get from it, and does it rather often, I've never managed to have multiple orgasms that way. I assume this is because I haven't managed to orgasm purely from the prostate stimulation and needed to also stimulate my penis, which causes me to hit the refractory period.
Do you have any tips or links on ways to have the orgasms you describe here?
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This is important, as women coercing men or ignoring their consent regarding pregnancy is not uncommon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_fatherhood
Uhh this is important because the onus and health risks of contraceptives have been entirely shouldered by women. Not because a very low percentage of men have been “coerced” into fatherhood.
There’s lots of comments in this thread on the risks of cancer and this and that risk with male contraceptives. meanwhile, these are already real issues women have to consider when using modern day hormonal contraceptives. The discourse in this thread is so dude-centric tone deaf.
> Not because a very low percentage of men have been “coerced” into fatherhood.
This dismissal is in bad taste and detracts significantly from the rest of your points made.
Sorry that a thread on male contraception is dude-centric? How is what you bring up a reason for men not to discuss these things?
Discussions around pregnancy, childbirthbirth and raising children are very gynocentric and minimising men.
They are disregarding men having to face a disproportionate economic burden paired with lower (often, NO) rights to have a say. For example, even if they desire abortion, women can force men to pay alimony. Another example would be the common paternity testing prohibition, allowing women to plant cuckoo children as they see fit.
Pharmaceutical contraception for men gives then back their reproductive rights.
99% effective? That’s three kids a year.
I believe when they report this, they're talking about whether there has been an unplanned pregnancy over the course of a year with either typical use or "perfect" use. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
That's not how that statistic work
I can't wait until this stuff hits the water supply /s
I got the /s
Europe is struggling with low birth rates. They wouldn’t do it here, as is right now it’s already a calamity.
What would that look like? Women complain it's unfair they have to be responsible for birth control in relationships. Now there's the ability for men to shoulder the responsibility too. Will voters, male and female, be ok with not taking the egalitarian path? Obviously governments are concerned about falling birthrates but they already have shown a willingness to continue policies that get them re-elected, even at the expense of birthrates.
I hope you replied to the wrong comment, I don't think women complaining about paying for birth control is a valid reason for sterilizing a population. Also condoms exist.
While there are complaints about cost depending on location, most of the complains are about the side effects of the pill, which women endure and men don't.
Ok, I'll just ignore the rest of the context of this thread.
> the side effects of the pill, which women endure and men don't.
women are free to choose to not take the pill or take it and accept the consequences. Also, there are many alternatives to the pill.
Either way, I don't understand what point you are trying to make. You are just making random statements and ignoring the context of the discussion.
"women are free to choose to not take the pill or take it and accept the consequences. Also, there are many alternatives to the pill."
Yes, but some people want all the benefits with none of the side effects. Of course there is no perfect solution.
> Yes, but some people want all the benefits with none of the side effects
Life is about making tradeoffs. There is no such thing as a free lunch, except while you are still a child.
> Life is about making tradeoffs
Progress is about eliminating them. We don’t need to trade off seafaring against scurvy, for example.
I would highly doubt this pill will eliminate tradeoffs. I'm sure the studies will find tradeoffs (side effects) just like virtually all medications.
> would highly doubt this pill will eliminate tradeoffs
I would, too. But it increases the pool of options, which means that for some people it really is a win-win. Get the same as you’re getting now, but with fewer (or less meaningful to you) side effects.
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We didn't have this covered with Magic: The Gathering, LARPing, cryptocurrency speculation, and Funko-pop collections already? /s
MtG is not effective. Married an MtG player and had 3 kids.
For best results, I believe you're supposed to combine all of the above. Like condoms, they don't always work perfectly.
I'm following your path, my fiancee is obsessed. No crypto speculation thank god
Imagine if you never had played MtG.
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Really? It seems like there's already plenty of non-reproductive sex happening! Leaving aside condoms and non-PIV sex acts, there are lots of women on birth control, men who have vasectomies, post-menopausal women, and infertile people in the world, who could certainly have lots of unprotected sex without any reproduction. Those people seem way better off than heroin addicts!
Time will tell.
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You are free to sterilize yourself. No need to harm other, just stand up for your believes.
Half of abortions take place before 6 weeks when the fetus basically doesn’t have a brain. There really isn’t another there to be harmed man.
Which is deeply unrelated to what I said
You want a 100% way of avoiding pregnancy ? You have it, today. Not tomorrow. Today. Just move your ass.
But indeed, it appears that some people are more capable of crying than of acting.
It’s completely related to what you said. Some people want to have kids sometime, but not right now.
The dream of getting something for free
Sounds like a fairy tale
Are you a bot? That’s not coherent.
Male abortion rights? As in the man should be allowed to abort a fetus developing from an egg that was unambiguously fertilized by him?
Or am I misunderstanding what you're proposing with "universal"?
In a better world it would be sensible to allow the guy to split without child support and so on if he didn’t want the child, but in the real world that would end up hurting a lot of people and birthing lots of kids into poverty. Whether you think that’s worth it is up to you.
Abortion as a right is thinking of abortion as a medical procedure that people have the right to access. Universal access, but men don’t tend to utilize it.
It really is an important thing to be able to manage pregnancy. Pregnancy is exceptionally brutal on the body and causes innumerable permanent changes. I think it makes sense as an emergency fallback when other preventative methods fail.
I recognize that kids in poverty is not a desirable outcome.
That said, I'd also point out that 18 years of child support (which many states assign as an uncapped percentage of the man's income - not based on what it actually costs to feed, clothe, house, and support a child) is exceptionally brutal on the finances and causes permanent financial loss that many men never financially recover from.
That is not a desirable outcome either - especially for high-income men who may end up risking child support payments in excess of the total gross income of the average person.
Telling men they can have EITHER financial security in this one area of their life OR sex - but not both - is not fair to men.
Imagine if the roles were reversed. Imagine a man telling a woman that if she doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, she shouldn't be having sex. He'd be eviscerated online, almost certainly fired immediately, probably doxxed and SWAT'ed or subject to other forms of harassment and threats - it is unthinkably offensive to even suggest that women must choose between the right to have sex and the right to be free from the risks of pregnancy, right?
So why the double standard? Why is it okay to give men this kind of ultimatum, but not women?
The double standard is because of the difference in practical consequences. I’m inclined to agree with you on principle, but it would be extremely harmful in practice. I think the move is to change society so that it would be less harmful, eg provide tons of government support to parents.
If the consequences for following through with a poorly-planned pregnancy are so tragically high for the children, why do we not simply restrict and have licensing requirements for the privilege to have children?
We use the power of the state to protect kids from alcohol, drugs, tobacco, mature content, etc. Why not use the power of the state to protect kids from poverty?
We don't let people operate automobiles on public roads, forklifts, practice medicine, sell insurance, manage investments, perform plumbing work, become a teacher, or even become a surveyor, an interior designer, or a hairdresser in many states without an evaluation of their competency and license from the state, why should the ability to become a parent be treated with less scrutiny than the ability to become a hairdresser or an interior designer?
If harm reduction is the primary operating principle here, isn't the unrestricted ability to have kids in direct opposition to that goal? There are objectively wrong and dangerous/harmful ways to parent (physically abusing kids, starving them, emotionally neglecting them, etc) just as there are objectively wrong and dangerous/harmful ways to operate a car (not following speed limits, not following traffic control devices, reckless driving), no?
Why is it perfectly fine for the state to restrict someone from selling insurance on the grounds of harm reduction, while there are no state restrictions whatsoever on parenthood?
Two points. The first is that harm reduction is what I want, but not necessarily what the state wants or what others want. Many want the state to promote stability, even if the world made stable involves a lot of harm. Objectively, a primary motive of the state is to maintain itself, since if it didn’t maintain itself it wouldn’t exist. Harm reduction is something the state has to be pushed and dragged into doing and there isn’t enough will to do so imo.
The second point is that what you’re asking for may cause more harm than it prevents by putting us one step away from a eugenics policy. Deliberate suppression of minority populations could (and would) be done by subtly adjusting the criteria people would need to meet to be approved for having children without the majority of the population taking notice. I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea if it had no misuse, but I’m certain it would be misused.
Just give parents money.
I want to clarify that I'm bouncing around policy ideas here, not making impassioned calls for specific policy positions.
Your concerns about state-sanctioned racialization / eugenics are certainly valid and historically supported.
I'd answer your call to give parents money with a question though - what money? The US, at the federal level, already spends trillions more than it collects each year, and now over a trillion dollars a year on interest payments, too. I don't believe we can just keep borrowing to infinity, consequence-free forever.
It also raises a question of needs prioritization. Do parents need that help more than homeless people do? What about bright but underserved kids from urban communities who might have the cognitive horsepower to become doctors but lack the financial means? What about foreigners living in far worse conditions than what we consider "poverty" here, like child slaves forced to mine toxic rare earth minerals in Africa?
I would argue that money to reduce child poverty and deprivation is one of the best, highest priority uses of money because it preempts many of the other issues that develop later as a consequence of material deprivation, lack of opportunity etc. In terms of affordability, I believe the covid child tax credit cost about 100 billion and achieved marked results. 100 billion isn’t a small deal, but if we raised taxes by 1-2% on households making around 200k+ it would cover it, which seems entirely worth it.
Considering we allow women to have abortions for arbitrary reasons, which include financial and any other non-medical, a paper abortion for men would make things a lot more equal.
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If the man wants the child, and the woman doesn't, the man "loses" - the child gets aborted.
If the man does not want the child, and the woman does, the man "loses" - he is forced to pay child support.
I have brought this up to feminists who have tended to respond just like the above: "if men don't want the financial risk, then they shouldn't be having sex", but that is itself a sexist sentiment that indirectly and unintentionally conveys the idea that women should have the "right" to have sex without having to worry about the financial risks of raising a child (women can always elect to abort if an unwanted pregnancy occurs - well, at least until recently in some states that are a bit backwards on women's rights), but that men should not have that same right (men should either remain sexless or be forced, at gunpoint by the state if necessary, to bear the financial costs of siring a child - men have zero rights, zero say, zero influence, zero protection if an unwanted pregnancy occurs).
I believe everyone should have the same rights. Women should be able to have sex without having to worry about being coerced by the state to bear the financial costs of raising an unwanted child. Men should also be able to have sex without having to worry about being coerced by the state to bear the financial costs of raising an unwanted child.
The current situation creates a power imbalance where women who do want children can financially railroad their male sex partners who do not want children.
If it is not fair to force a woman to raise a child she does not want, why is it fair to force a man to pay for raising a child he does not want?
Telling men they can have EITHER financial security in this one area of their life OR sex - but not both - is not fair to men.
Imagine if the roles were reversed. Imagine a man telling a woman that if she doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, she shouldn't be having sex. He'd be eviscerated online, almost certainly fired immediately, probably doxxed and SWAT'ed or subject to other forms of harassment and threats - it is unthinkably offensive to even suggest that women must choose between the right to have sex and the right to be free from the risks of pregnancy, right?
So why the double standard? Why is it okay to give men this kind of ultimatum, but not women?
>You do the crime, you do the time. Don't want kids? Don't have sex.
If having sex with someone who isn't on the same page as you about having kids is a "crime", why are women (almost) always exonerated from the consequences while the men are (almost) always guilty and (almost) always forced to bear the consequences? Why the double standard?
And for what it's worth: I am firmly pro choice. The solution to inequality is ALWAYS to increase the rights of the "losing" side of the power imbalance, NEVER to take rights away from the "winning" side.
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Miscarriage is the end of 15-20% of pregnancies.
Nature does not seem to agree that "killing people" is wrong.
> Both mice and non-human primates fully regained fertility after stopping the drug. Mice regained fertility within six weeks, and non-human primates fully recovered their sperm count in 10-15 weeks.
Great recurring source of revenue for the drug company!
Though I'm more interested in feral animals like dogs. It looks like this drug may work on dogs too? If so, it would be a huge boon for cities and villages in India.
Why would Cities and Villages in India want a reversible dog contraceptive? They want a cheap, easily deployable, indefinite one.
I'm saying that a dog contraceptive is what those places need. That fact that it's reversible is a downside.
There's already a permanent and cheap dog contraceptive. It's called neutration.
The problem in places that have feral dog problems isn't the lack of a contraceptive, it's lack of funds, skilled vets, or (and I think this is the main one) political and cultural will to get it done.
I'm not sure why India is getting singled out here, lots of places around the world have a dog problem. India might have the largest number of strays on paper but only because it's huge.
For India the best option is castration and hysterectomy
Seems like neutering them would be cheaper and there’s no risk of the dogs missing a drug cycle.
Wtf? This is ridiculous. Who the fuck is going to be giving feral dogs a pill everyday? And why would you want a reversible contraceptive for feral dogs? You want a one-and-done irreversible one, which neutering is.
If it could be mixed into dog food it could be fairly easy to use. You'd just have to feed stray dogs for a decade or two and have the problem mostly solved. With added benefit of stray dogs being less of a nuisance if they are getting a bit domesticated by feeding them regularily.
Neutering is not possible in villages. You'd be hard pressed to find a vet anywhere nearby.
Usually this is done by people who visit the village and do it all at once.
So you think that it's more feasible to obtain thousands of pills and have someone give pills to stray dogs daily than it is to have a vet visit the village once?
Having people go out and give a pill to feral dogs daily or near daily seems like a waste of time. Just go out and shoot them, or capture them and put them down. Its a cheaper and more permanent solution.
99% effective. So if you have sex once a day, you'll only produce 3 kids a year.
Birth control effectiveness is typically reported for one year of use, so 100 years of use would produce 1 pregnancy on average
Or, one year of use by 100 men would result in an average of one partner pregnancy per year for this group.
So a kid a year? A couple married at 18 would be on the road to a record family size at 1 kid a year
No, a kid per hundred years.
oh well that makes much more sense. Thanks for clarifying
That's not how birth control effectiveness is measured. It's not measured per act of intercourse.
Birth control effectiveness is measured by calculating the number of pregnancies per 100 women using a specific method for a full calendar year.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/family-plan...
>Effectiveness of methods is measured by the number of pregnancies per 100 women using the method per year.
Is that adjusted for frequency of intercourse? Can’t really compare a woman who has sex 10 times a year to one who’s having sex 20 times a month.
I assume the "per 100 women" part suffices to regress towards the mean
How is it measured in mice and non-human primates?
As someone who's currently producing 365.25 kids a year, I'll take it.
> In male mice, the drug caused infertility and was 99% effective in preventing pregnancies within four weeks of use.
I don't know if they mean 99% reduction compared to normal or 99% of mice did not cause a pregnancy. Either way this does not mean that every intercourse has a 1% chance of causing a pregnancy. Also you are assuming an unconditional probability. It could very well be a conditional probability. It might completely work for 99% that do not cause any pregnancies at all and not work for 1% that cause pregnancies as without the drug.
Anyway I am looking forward to getting the perl index for humans from clinical trials.
Edit: fixed wrong wording
Female birth control states the same, as nothing is ever 100%
Sometimes life, uhh, finds a way.
But yes, if they said something is 100% effective and it wasn’t, I would imagine they would be sued into bankruptcy pretty fast.
How much would an accidental child cost these days?
With the female contraceptive pill 0.3% of women get pregnant within a year if taken perfectly (which is rarely the case, but the figure here is also from lab conditions). This drug leads to 1% pregnancies in 4 weaks, which is much worse.
That said this is still great news especially as the condom is also much less safe then the female contraceptive pill.
Condoms are extremely effective also, if used perfectly, which is rarely the case. Statistics should be based on real-world experience not theoretical best case.
Wikipedia gives a 2% pregnancy rate for condoms within one year with perfect use which is much worse than 0.3%.
We only have the numbers for the lab environment with I assume perfect use for this new drug, so we can only compare perfect use.
I've always been intrigued by where those 2% come from, since condoms are a physical barrier... Teleporting sperm?
The statistics show that the 2% comes from breakage/slippage, micropores and manufacturing defects:
https://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(04)0...
Mostly misuse. The studies are all nonsense AFAIK, they rely on the participants to use the condoms correctly, which predictably doesn't happen. Problems the studies mention, like slippage and breakage are the result of misuse, probably due to choosing the wrong condom size.
The only reason for a properly used condom to not work would be a manufacturing defect, which should be extremely rare, certainly not 2%, that's plainly ridiculous and immediately disqualifies any study that claims so.
The statistics are based on real world experience rather than theoretical best case. Not to pick on you but really surprised to hear people confidently express so much misinformation on this topic when it's not even particularly hard to find information on it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_me...
What throws me off about this, is it's not difficult to use perfectly. Condoms are the only method I trust. Pull-out? Can screw it up. With birth control you're (until now) relying on your partner to use it perfectly.
It's worth measuring both ideal and real world use, IMO.
you really have to take that pill as soon as it enters the market (/s)
I'm sure it's illegal for a woman to secretly swap out her boyfriend's medicine for a placebo, but good luck proving it happened in court.
This would make it a lot harder... they can already do that with their own pills, after this, they would have to find an exact match for the men's pills and somehow replace them without the guy noticing, which would be realatively harder.
You realize that without the pill it’s drastically easier to baby trap right?
?
Women could baby-trap their boyfriend into marriage by swapping out his pills for placebo, then blame the pregnancy on the pills not working.
Most women would never do this, but a few definitely would.
They could poke holes in condoms too. If the male doesn’t trust the female then they probably shouldn’t have sex.
So why are you making it a gender politics issue if it isn’t even a common enough behavior among women
You guys are reading from my comment some sort of aggressive anti-pill stance that isn't there. I'm just predicting something that will happen, because predicting the future and seeing if reality later plays out that way is fun.
Manosphere brainrot
It's way easier to do that for her own pills. You still want the condom to be more certain...
You'd likely want condoms anyway, unless you are in a stable long-term relationship with somebody highly trustworthy.
birth-control pills (male or female) are powerless against sexually-transmissible diseases.
And men with a pregnancy fetish can do the same. What’s your point?
Not every discussion is about making a point.
he's referring to sperm jacking.
From big pharma, yes.
But their so called "solutions" seem to become ever more destructive long term.
Neem is a natural alternative that has been used for a long time.
> Neem is a natural alternative that has been used for a long time
It is [1]. But it also trashes your liver if used chronically [2].
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34092456/
[2] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018JPhCS1025a2043J/abstra...
They would say so, yes, because profits.
Versus the famously-altruistic alternative medicine and supplements industries?
Compare the numbers, then we can discuss.
How about we nationalize the drug companies AND shoot blanks
One concern I might have is that I’ve heard (and Wikipedia confirms, though with caveats[1]) that ejaculation can help avoid prostate cancer.
“These [studies] suggest that frequent ejaculation after puberty offers some reduction of the risk of prostate cancer.”
I think we need more/bigger studies to get a handle on how big the effect is though.
[1] NSFW warning - this is a Wikipedia article with a picture of a guy ejaculating riiiiight at the top: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejaculation#Health_issues
It inhibit the sperm not ejaculation
Whoops, you’re right! I read the article and then some comments that were (I see now) tangentially related. Stuff got jumbled up, and I confidently posted something incorrect.
This pill is definitely good for you, with no unmeasured and unexpected side effects!
What is the purpose of this comment? This is reporting on a phase 1 trial, which is when side effects and potential toxicity are evaluated. Of course there are no known side effects yet, that's what the trial exists to identify.
This is one of the annoying things about life. Testosterone effectively already does this and is quite safe. It's just that society is not comfortable with men taking steroids for no particularly good reason.
> is quite safe
Taking outside sources of testosterone permanently alters your body's ability to make testosterone naturally, to the extent that many people who previously took steroids find they have be on testosterone therapy for the rest of their lives.
I wouldn't call "creating a lifelong requirement to take artificial hormones in order to function at your previous baseline" qualifying as "no particularly good reason".
Most people who go on Testosterone can go off it just fine. Here's a random study:
>Ever since that study, testosterone has undergone extensive clinical trials as a hormonal method of male contraception and many have found testosterone to be efficacious, reversible and safe with minimal short-term side effects
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6305868/
It's not super reliable but it's also easily testable if it's working or not.
To be clear, the snippet you quoted is your study summarizing the claims of other studies which are among the cohort analyzed.
Let's quote the short, succinct conclusion of the study you picked:
> Testosterone therapy is a contraceptive, albeit a poor one. Men of reproductive age with low testosterone should be counseled on the adverse effects of TRT on fertility. Obtaining a semen analysis and possible cryopreservation of sperm should be offered if TRT is prescribed to men interested in preserving fertility. Options such as clomiphene citrate and hCG along with a referral to a reproductive urologist should be considered to naturally increase testosterone levels in those men with low testosterone who want to avoid TRT.
Whether a contraceptive that is sufficiently irreversible that men using it are advised to freeze sperm if they ever want kids should be considered "reversible" is left as an exercise to the reader.
You're misunderstanding what they're saying here. They are saying TRT will have an impact on fertility while they are on TRT. The prospects for when they go off TRT are fine:
>If a patient currently desires fertility, TRT should be avoided or discontinued immediately. A semen analyses should be performed if the patient has discontinued TRT. Azoospermia or severe oligospermia may be seen in these patients, but most men should return to baseline semen analyses in 6 to 9 months after cessation of TRT [13,14,15]. A 2006 integrated analysis showed that 90% of patients were expected to return to baseline sperm concentration values 12 months after cessation of treatment and 100% after 24 months [50].
I'm not misunderstandings, you are conflating several different things: TRT, testosterone as a contraceptive, and testosterone as a body building steroid.
TRT is a very low dose of testosterone, used to supplement the body when it doesn't produce enough. It is reversible as you say, and has a negative effect on fertility but not enough to be reliably effective as a contraceptive at TRT dosages.
Testosterone as a contraceptive or steroid is a far higher dose. This is the one that has permanent effects.
It also causes temporary shrinkage in the high overdose needed for any reliability, as opposed to normal dosage.
Pharma companies would think that is a great reason.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6305868/
"Testosterone as a contraceptive can suppress spermatogenesis and lead to azoospermia in 65% of normospermic men within 4 months of use"
Does this sound like a convenient and effective contraceptive? Where are you really coming from with this statement?
This is what I mean. Why is everyone so weird about it? It's hormonal birth control for men. Even if it works for only 65% of them it's better than nothing since it can be tested to see if it's working easily.
According to Sapolsky, testosterone amplifies current behaviors. If you’re already aggressive, you become more. If you’re already X, it amplifies. Just because it’s safe doesn’t mean people want to be in affected states permanently.
Roid rage is probably a myth. The causation likely goes the other way. Meaning aggressive people are more likely to use steroids than steroids are causing them to be aggressive:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-myth-of-roid-rag...
While I disagree with your claim that steroids are a viable form of birth control, I do agree a bit with this, though not for the stated reason.
What many people don’t realize (probably in large part because they see testosterone and estrogen as diametrically opposed things) is that testosterone levels impacts estrogen levels. Why? Because the body produces estrogen through the aromitization of testosterone. Increasing testosterone will increase estrogen.
A common struggle for those on TRT (both those at true replacement levels, as well as those taking supraphysiological doses) is elevated estrogen. I know that when my estrogen levels have gone too high, I become more neurotic than I usually am.
If you couple increased neuroticism with an elevated sense of dominance (especially at bodybuilding doses), and top that off with a general lack of poor management of one’s emotions (which I suspect is common amongst bodybuilders), what you likely get is a very volatile person. Not because of testosterone, but because of the elevated estrogen and their existing psychological issues.
I agree, and not even just that, it is associated with hair loss, among many other things. In fact, psychiatric medications are less effective (sometimes completely) if your T is high.
Supraphysiological doses of testosterone are not considered safe, and frequent (weekly+) intramuscular injections are not convenient.
Woah, now. You are dangerously mistaken here.
As I wrote over in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43746406
I’m on TRT, without hCG. I went and had a vasectomy a year ago. Because I’m weird and infinitely curious, two or three days after the procedure, I took three samples per day, and looked at each under the microscope. What I saw put to shame just about any video I could find online of a “good” sperm sample. Straight laser beams, zipping from one side of the slide to the other. If you were to scale Micheal Phelps down to these swimmers, he’d stand no chance. And the concentration was ridiculous, too. And this all 2-5 day old (at least) sperm!
TRT is not a reliable form of birth control.