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There are all kinds of jobs involved in heterosexual sex. Some are more fun than others. But it’s women who have long been tasked with outlaying the time and money to facilitate a baby-free bang. Yes, much like domestic chores, the mental load, child-growing and subsequent rearing, pregnancy prevention is typically a woman’s role.
Science is here for us of course, working to develop a possible evening-up-of-the score in the form of the male contraceptive pill. But if men’s historical reliability for both supplying and actually using condoms (or keeping them on) is anything to go by, we don’t really trust men will take it, and the consequences of inevitable forgetfulness will again land on women.
The benefits of hormonal birth control fall heavily on the cis-het male in a relationship, yet the cost and burden of contraception are not shared.Credit: iStock
That’s right, if you’d hoped that by 2023 the burden of pregnancy and responsibilities of child-rearing would fall evenly upon both partners, I invite you to take a squiz at this recent viral “Am I The Asshole” Subreddit, where the original poster details the many ways his pregnant roommate has been leaning too heavily on him for support, thus making her pregnancy “his problem”. He did somehow neglect to mention that his “roommate” was actually his wife and soon-to-be mother of his child.
There’s a lot to be said for working to your strengths in a partnership. My husband does the groceries and kitchen cleaning while I take care of nightly dinners and occasional covert parenting breaks in my parked car. But it pays to examine how these arrangements emerged before his and my bank accounts became one.
Apart from an interlude during which we conceived our son, I’ve been on the pill since I was 17, and naturally took care of everything from prescription to ingestion. But lately, if the subject of my husband’s inevitable vasectomy comes up, he crosses his legs and exclaims, “No one’s chopping off my bits!” (At least our two-year-old thinks he’s funny).
Jokes aside, I wholeheartedly resent that for 13 years it’s been up to me to keep my oven free of unwanted buns while my male counterparts have simply had to show up and drop trou. Why should the costs of pregnancy prevention fall to women?
An older friend of mine recently recounted his teenage son’s experience with this very question after his boy received a phone call from his girlfriend’s parents. Upon discovering their daughter was sexually active and indeed taking the pill (hats off to Gen-Z taking control of their sexual health), her parents called up the mortified teen for a stern talking-to about failing to cough up his share. And considering the cost of some hormonal birth control, which can be up to a dollar a day, those helicopter parents have a bloody good point.
Because really, in the case of cisgender, heterosexual coupling, it can easily be argued that the benefits of hormonal birth control fall heavily on the cis-het male side of the scale. Advantages for men can include condom-free sex, zero emotional labour, and a distinctly child-free life. For women, the benefits are, well, not being pregnant, yet the costs are numerous.
In addition to the indignity of constantly asking your doctor for permission to have pregnancy-free sex, and the gap left after Medicare does its part, women get stuck with a lucky-dip bag of side effects ranging from nausea and headaches, to body changes, and impacts on mood and wellbeing – not to mention the mental load of remembering to take the dang things.
The burden on women to manage their own risk of pregnancy was recently brought into starker focus with the overturn of Roe v Wade and the end of access to safe and legal abortions in multiple American states.
Some might justly feel relying on a male partner for financial aid in such an intimate space could be akin to relinquishing their power over their own body. And they would have a point because, predictably, women end up with the urine-soaked end of the pregnancy test when it comes to mismanaged birth control, either facing down a possibly painful (physically and often emotionally) termination or the very real prospect of life as a single parent. And in that case, I say, do what feels right for you.
Of course, sitting in the ivory tower of a straightforward cis-het marriage, the answer seems incredibly simple to me – yes, the cost, and the burden here should be shared.
I’d like to think that if I had my time again, I would absolutely insist past lovers split the cost of preventing our unwanted offspring, but I can appreciate the rosiness of hindsight.
What I can say is, if that pill for blokes makes it to market before my husband and I finish with the procreation portion of the program, he’ll be off to the GP in less time than it takes the doctor to say, “vas deferens”.
Hannah Vanderheide is a freelance writer and actor.
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