Ladies, your man may be able to take a birth control pill soon. But will male birth control ever really take off? Or will the responsibility to take birth control continue to be a woman’s burden?

Bust recently reported that the release of a new male birth control pill may be on the horizon. The feminist site reports that new medical trials in Indonesia may finally result in a male birth control pill.

Here are the details about the pill:

• It’s a daily pill.
• This pill is non-hormonal.
• The pill works by using “enzymes that help the sperm reach the egg.”
• The project’s lead scientist reports that the pill is 99-percent effective.
• The pill’s main ingredient is gendarussa, an Indonesian plant.

Since trials have been largely successful, the pill very well may be on the Indonesian market by 2016. Obviously, it will take much, much longer for the pill to become available in the United States.

But the big question here is – even if the pill becomes available in the United States – will men actually take a daily pill to avoid pregnancy? I have no idea, as I’m not a dude. All I know is that I’m totally cool taking a pill every day that prevents pregnancy. I am well aware that I am not ready to have a child for various reasons, and am incredibly thankful for the pill and condoms. And I truly think that when people have ways to control their future and have access to diverse family planning options, they end up having happier, and more fulfilled lives.

I do hope that this pill is successful and it does come to the United States. In my opinion, it’s great for people to have as many contraceptive options as possible.

Related on EcoSalon

How Green Is the Birth Control Pill?

Natural Birth Control Tips, Part 1: The Pill, The Environment and Your Health

Some Say Condoms Are Creating More Trash. We Say They’re Good for the Environment.

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ColumnA new book called “Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Get Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control” has sparked a controversial discussion about sex, contraception, “pulling out,” and “pregnancy ambivalence.”

I haven’t read the book yet, but I agree with part of its premise, that the pill can wreak massive havoc on women’s bodies. I’ve experienced it, as have dozens of my friends and colleagues. That doesn’t mean that the pill isn’t the right choice of contraception for some women; it is and will remain so. In the meantime, from New York Magazine to Jezebel and Slate, we’re talking about the delicate balance of politics, pleasure and the responsibility of being a sexually active woman. And that’s a very good thing.

I’m a pro-sex feminist, and when asked about contraception, especially from teens, college students, and young women, I take an “all of the above” approach. Truly – the most important thing is that women know what their choices are and how their bodies work. For the sake of this post, let’s establish that we’re talking about women in long-term, monogamous relationships, where STIs aren’t an issue. For singles or others with multiple partners, hands-down, condoms are the best (if not the only) choice. (Remember, wrap it up if you’re unsure of your partner’s STI status. Period.)

Over at New York Magazine, The Cut’s recent post, “No Pill? No Prob. Meet the Pullout Generation” generated hundreds of comments after suggesting that legions of women in their thirties have given up on birth control and just let their partners pull out after sex. Reasons cited: hatred of condoms because of the way they feel, disgust with the pill, (unwarranted?) fear of the IUD, and more. A recent study suggests that of the one in three women between the ages of 15 – 24 who used the pull out method, 21 percent had accidental pregnancies. Those statistics aren’t exactly fabulous.

For those of us who live on kale, quinoa, and yoga (hello, lovely EcoSalon readers), the pill’s myriad dangers aren’t exactly news. From cancer to low libido to breakthrough bleeding and depression, hormonal birth control comes with so many minuses, it’s easy to forget about the one big plus: pregnancy avoidance. The pill liberated women in the 1960s, putting them in control of their own sex lives. For that, it’s profoundly revolutionary. But fifty years on, we know how it makes us feel, and many of us don’t want that anymore. Being in control of our reproductive lives means being in control of our bodies overall. Women no longer automatically believe everything their doctors dictate. We openly question the side effects of pharmaceuticals and do our due diligence; research is part of the process getting and staying well.

Are You Part of the Pullout Generation?

If you’re pulling out willy-nilly, consider these facts: there can be sperm in pre-cum. You can get pregnant ANY time in your cycle, even if you use a period tracker. Thank goodness that Plan B exists. But you know what? Plan B is NOT fun to take. Plan to be super nauseous if you need to take Plan B. If you had an unwanted pregnancy, the constitution still affords us the legal right to an abortion (at least for now). It’s there for you if you need it — but I’m sure you’d prefer not to need it, right?

Amanda Marcotte expanded on the pull out fray in her piece on pregnancy ambivalence. Women who’ve seriously contemplated having kids (or already have them) seem, to me, to be in a different category altogether. Not everyone is in that situation, and even if some women feel emotionally ambivalent about having kids, screwing around with birth control probably isn’t the smartest way to deal with it.

My take on the recent spate of articles about the pull out method and pregnancy ambivalence is that they reveal how little women really know about their bodies. If you really want to avoid pregnancy, you need more than a period tracker app – you need to know how your lady business really works. If your period came on day 28 last month, there’s no reassurance that it’s going to happen again, exactly like that, next month. Say you and your guy have hot sex and he pulls out – but just a moment later than he should. You can ovulate earlier and later than you typically do any month, without warning – so you need to know more than just the last time you bled. Fertility Awareness can work very well – but only if you do it right.

If the IUD isn’t for you, if your guy isn’t ready to get the snip, and if  an accidental pregnancy is something you can work with right now, take the time to learn about your cervical mucus, the height of your cervix throughout your cycle, and track your basal body temperature. This is the way that women who WANT to get pregnant do it – and those of you who DON’T necessarily want to get pregnant should take your body just as seriously.

Truly safe, healthy, non-invasive birth control that no one has to think much about may be a part of our future. But until it is, a combination of open communication, health and awareness of options must be the starting point for our reproductive lives. When we talk about sex, the discussion about what women want often gets swept under the rug. That’s why it’s taken so long for us to start this dialogue.

Revolutions come in waves — let’s hope the next one honors the depths of women’s desires and our health, wellness,  emotional and intellectual needs — all on equal footing.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email her at stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in her next Sexual Healing column.

Related on EcoSalon:

What Women Want Matters, A lot: Welcome to the Sexual Revolution 2.0

For 2012, Pleasure is the Revolution We’ve Been Waiting For

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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From STIs to unwanted children, protect ourselves we must. For the sustainability-inclined, natural birth control can be a complex maze to navigate. Eco-conscious people aren’t simply thinking about how an unwanted child might affect their own lives – they’re considering the broader implications of overpopulation, planetary wellness, and health. Since I know you’d rather skip the research and just get to getting busy, I’m going to break it all down for you.

Spring is in the air in the Northern Hemisphere: the ritual shedding of clothing has already begun. I’m not just talking about bikini-season here. Getting naked is good for you – experts say that sex has measurable health benefits, and hell, it definitely beats spin class. But for all its pleasure-inducing and blood-pressure-reducing side effects, copulation has definite consequences.

Contraception is a Human Right

For the last few years we’ve been dealing with a very real War on Women and a massive, retrograde assault on reproductive rights – in states all over the U.S., the pendulum has already begun to swing back to the 1950s. This is, in part, why it’s such an important moment for us to carefully assess the reproductive options we still have – and we must fight to keep them all. No matter what path to protecting yourself you end up choosing, remember that access to contraception is a human right.

Here is where it gets complicated – take the birth control pill. It revolutionized the lives of millions of women when it first became available in 1960, and for that, it’s worth celebrating. But if you care about the health of your body and the planet, you’ll want to closely examine what is actually in hormonal birth control, and what it does to the ecosystem of your body. It seems like hormonal contraception is a no-brainer for women in monogamous, heterosexual relationships. Your biggest concern is avoiding pregnancy, and you don’t want to have to think about barrier methods. Right? Perhaps not.

Hormonal contraceptives prevent pregnancy by tricking a woman’s body into a kind of chemical menopause. That, in itself, has consequences – it’s pretty clear that nature designed our bodies to menstruate for a reason. Aside from the laundry list of short-term dangers included on the package insert provided by Big Pharma (migraines, water retention, high blood pressure, breast swelling, spotting) use of the pill is linked with risk for strokes, breast and cervical cancer, and long-term infertility. Not to mention anecdotal evidence that it ironically lowers your sex drive – what is the point of birth control that makes you less libidinous? If that’s not enough for you, consider what hormonal contraceptives may be doing to the environment.

The endocrine-disrupting-chemicals (EDCs) in hormonal contraceptives leach into our water systems in a variety of ways. Women excrete them in their urine and unused packs end up in landfills. Synthetic estrogen, when dumped into the ecosystem, has similar properties to pesticides – it feminizes aquatic animals. Large-scale UK studies have shown that even low levels of estrogen in waterways caused reduced fertility in male fish. While pesticides from industrial agriculture remain the greatest threat to the environment, the very personal choice of birth control matters – both to your body and to the planet.

Although I believe that condoms are a terrific birth control method for people with multiple partners (those that don’t need to worry about STIs) unless you’re buying the right brand, you may be loading up landfills with waste that won’t biodegrade. Not to mention, many condom manufacturers use irritating, toxic lubricant.

In part two of this series, we’ll look at safer, healthier ways to make sure that your natural birth control choices are as green as your makeup routine.

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing, 2010) and eight other books. Stefanie keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more for many publications. Learn more at ecosex.net and follow her on Twitter: @ecosexuality.

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Contemplating the idea of birth control and doing better for planet but, at what cost?

Last year I decide to “green” my birth control.

My decision stemmed from a combination of concerns—OK, guilt—related to how I was keeping myself baby-free. Some environmental drawbacks of birth control are obvious: I cringed every time I tossed an empty blister pack and its handy plastic case in the trash (my pharmacy isn’t into the idea of giving me just the blister pack so I can reuse the case-I’ve asked).

But that wasn’t my main concern. I had read in Scientific American that every time I peed, I was flushing synthetic estrogen down the pipes, to a water treatment plant that does not treat for hormones, and out into the waterways where it was doing disturbing things to the reproductive parts of fish.

It turns out that the main culprit in the cancer-causing levels of estrogen in our water is our agricultural system, but at the time, I wanted to do right by my aquatic friends and other people who would eventually be drinking water with the estrogen that passed through my body. (Nice image, right?)

And there were other, more selfish reasons I wanted to discontinue my use of hormones. At the time I was in a relationship with a great guy, the kind of relationship where after my first night over at his apartment I spent the next three days until I could see him again obsessively replaying everything in my head over and over and over again. But after I went on the pill my sex drive plummeted. Studies have been mixed, but a German study confirmed my suspicion that my hormonal birth control was to blame.

One day I was sitting on my boyfriend’s couch reading a fascinating Psychology Today article on how women’s personalities go through subtle shifts throughout their natural hormonal cycle, from bold and confident to more shy and introverted. Suddenly, I felt like by using birth control I was missing out on a whole facet of my personality and the experience of being a woman. I was already trying to eat more naturally and use natural beauty products. Flushing hormones out of my body seemed like the next step. So I did some Google searching, and came across ParaGard, the brand name of the copper IUD, which works by creating mild inflammation and a “hostile environment” in the uterus for both eggs and sperm.

I thought it was an inspired idea. For a manageable up front cost – about $300 – I would stop having to remember to take a pill every morning, stop peeing hormones into the environment and regain my “natural” self, the self that doesn’t think it’s pregnant year-round. (And hopefully improve my suffering sex-life.) IUDs are also even more effective than the pill if you take into account always forgetting to actually take it (which I often did). I ignored the side effects noted in the literature: mild cramping and a heavier period. Everything has side effects, right? And usually side affects just don’t apply to me.

It’s actually rare that a gynecologist would agree to prescribe an IUD to a twenty-something, unmarried girl like me. Despite IUDs being more effective than the alternatives, only 2% of the U.S. market uses them. Many doctors hold the outdated notion that IUDs are dangerous, may cause infertility and should be given only to married women who have children. My friend tried and couldn’t find a doctor in Virginia that would agree to discuss it with her while she was in college. In reality, you should be more careful about when you have an IUD, because getting chlamydia or gonorrhea when you have an IUD can lead to pelvic inflammatory diseases. Not a pretty picture.

But if you’re in a monogamous relationship and/or are careful about using condoms, it’s not a big concern. So my forward thinking, NYC gyno was down to make it happen for me.

Two weeks later I was back at her office for the procedure. I’m pretty tough, so I managed to keep my complaints to “Ow, ow, ow, ow HOLY SHIT OW THAT REALLY HURTS.” I will say this: That sort of pain reinforced my decision to never have children. Because of that is what it feels like to have something so tiny put in there, I don’t want to feel what it’s like to have a seven-pound being come out.

And the pain didn’t stop. I managed to make it back to my apartment a few blocks away, where I curled up in a ball and didn’t do anything except meditate on the extreme pain for the next five hours. It finally subsided somewhat, but over the next week waves of pain continued to periodically blossom in my uterus.

And then my first period came.

I have never gotten cramps with my period, but now the hot pain made we want to crawl under a piece of furniture and hide there. I called my doctor’s office to ask if this was normal, but the nurse assured me it would get better. It never really did. Every period came with a fresh reminder of the fact that I now had a “hostile environment” and “mild inflammation” inside my body. My periods were now so heavy that I had to set an alert on my phone so I would remember to visit the bathroom every 2.5 hours and change out my Diva cup. As if to kick me one more time, the pain would make one final appearance the day after my period was over.

Then, three months after I got off of the pill, the lower half of my face broke out in a big way. My dermatologist took one look and said, “This is just normal adult hormonal acne. You could clear it up with birth control.” So this is what natural, hormone-free living looks like: 15 to 20 zits hanging out all over your chin and jawline.

Almost exactly one year later after I got my IUD, as I literally hid under my desk at work (darkness and being on the ground was somehow comforting), and imagined going through this routine every 28 days for the next ten years, is when I realized that I was not up for it. I grabbed my cell phone and made an appointment with my gynecologist. “I want this out of my body,” I told her.

She was surprised by my decision. After all, many women have an IUD and love it. She tentatively suggested that perhaps it would be better for women who have had children. They have, ahem, a little more room to accommodate it. Whatever. All I know is that for me, it was a nightmare.

Now I’m back on the pill, and while it’s not ideal (of course, what form of birth control is?) I’m happy to be back in artificial hormone land. My sex drive is just fine, I’m only four pounds above my starting weight (a small price to pay), and I even got the type of birth control that banishes three out of four periods from your cycle.

Alden is a 25-year-old writer living in New York City. You can find her musings about seeking sustainably in the city at her blog, CleanHippie, or follow her at @CleanHippieNY

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of the birth control pill. The pill was first envisioned by family planning crusader Margaret Sanger as a remedy to the debilitating cycle of perpetual pregnancy for married women. Sanger’s own mother died at the age of 50 after 18 pregnancies; at her funeral Sanger famously confronted her father, telling him, “You caused this. Mother is dead from having too many children.”

The pill was intended to proffer women control over their reproductive destinies. But its secondary impact was just as important: women entered the workforce. Before the pill, less than 20 percent of women with a child under 18 worked outside the home. By the end of the last century, that number skyrocketed to 70 percent. Though many women still find themselves choosing between a career and a family, the pill allowed women to better calibrate these decisions. What followed, of course, was a major upheaval in the way we view men and women and their societal roles. Today, we’re still adjusting to that delicious shakedown.

For all the benefits of the pill, the iconic contraceptive has reaped its fair share of criticism. Like the condom, the pill, which is taken by more than 100 million women worldwide, has come under fire for having an iffy environmental track record. In a recent post on Grist.org, Lisa Hymas rolls her eyes at the media’s love note to the pill on its 50th anniversary.

“We’re still agog over a pill that Margaret Sanger dreamed up in 1912 – one that we have to take every single day, one that messes with our hormones, one that has unpleasant side effects for many women, one that contaminates our water supplies.”

Indeed, the pill is widely credited with diminishing certain fish populations. Estrogen, excreted in the urine of pill users, enters waterways where it is consumed by fish. In one Canadian and U.S. government experiment, male winnows exposed to trace amounts of estrogen became feminized. Their testicular development stopped and they began making eggs instead. Unable to reproduce, the fish population in the experiment died out within two years.

In addition to its impact on wildlife, the pill’s estrogen runoff may adversely affect humans, particularly in developing countries where waste water is more commonly recycled for human consumption.

Hymas’ call for a greener pill, a more accessible pill, and even a pill for men, deserves to be seconded. But let’s not forget that the pill has been a major boon for the environment in one regard. If you think the earth is overpopulated now, imagine what things would look like without the contraceptive. And for that reason, we toast the pill on its 50th anniversary.

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