Here's an excerpt from a paper I wrote for class for those of you interested in this topic:

A Discussion: How to Reduce Overpopulation without Mentioning Birth Control

About a year and a half ago, I was invited to an exclusive dinner party hosted by an older friend of mine who had recently transplanted from the Bay Area to this small town in New Mexico. A good friend of his, a professor at Stanford who had written a lot on the subject of overpopulation, was visiting him – so they had decided to host a salon party and discussion evening to contemplate the problem of overpopulation. I was the only person in my age group invited, and after the bright older women listened to the ideas of the men, cleaned up the kitchen and went home to put their children to bed, I found myself the only woman left in the discussion.

It was hard to get a word in edgewise. When I finally did, I said, “I’m surprised that in this whole discussion of overpopulation and the need for each couple to have only one child, not once has birth control been mentioned.”

The professor had a ready answer for me. He said that he knew the man whose work had led to widespread use of the pill (Carl Djerassi) and that if I were to visit him in California I could meet the patriarch of women’s liberation in person. I admitted that the pill had given many women freedom, but that the only women friends I had who actually liked it did so because it caused their breasts to get larger and their skin to clear up. The rest of my friends hated the pill, and I myself had refused to continue using it after six months on it, because I felt like some weird parody of womanhood on it.

The professor replied, “There are projects underway to create a male pill. Wouldn’t that be great?” I dissented: having experienced the horrible affects of hormonal birth control firsthand, I would not wish it on anyone. Besides, pundits have been saying that hormonal male contraception would be on the market in “five to ten years” for more than 15 years now.

Well, what then to do? I described to them the partner-based birth control method I had used for years – a combination of fertility awareness; spiritual communion; consistent, verbalized intentionality and communication around fertility; vaginal PH change; condom use during fertile times; and abstinence from ejaculation on the part of the male. This last aspect of the program was not a popular idea among this group of men.

This extensive list of tasks I go through to prevent conception is not a hassle – as Memmler’s list of birth control options implies when it states that one disadvantage of the fertility awareness method is that it “requires careful record keeping.” As though being intimately interested in our bodies – their cycles and changes – were somehow distasteful, a cumbersome distraction or even a pathology. Who has the time when you just wanna get it on? Who wants to actually be conscious around sex? Sex should be spontaneous, carefree – right? Yes – so long as the woman is carrying all the burden of birth control, and so long as that birth control allows her to be conveniently unconscious of the full power of her choice, the rhythms of her body - and an experiential familiarity with the deeper source of her most essential, luxuriant desire.

Disadvantages of Hormonal Birth Control

The Male Contraception Information Project (MCIP), under the direction of Elaine Lissner and Kirsten Thompson, is dedicated to “raising public awareness of promising non-hormonal male contraceptives, advocating increased and expedited government research, and serving as a resource for journalists who wish to write about the subject.” In their call for more research and funding for non-hormonal male contraception, they give a detailed account of the shortcomings of barrier methods as well as hormonal methods (pointing out that besides low efficacy rates, barrier methods pose difficult challenges to poor women living in areas without access to clean water for cleaning out diaphragms, for example).

Memmler’s lists some of the disadvantages of hormonal birth control as follows: risk of cardiovascular disease in older or smoking women; menstrual irregularity; infections; irritation; alters physiology (An aside: yes, we know that Memmler’s must by necessity provide a truncated version of some truths. For example, it describes the clitoris as a “small organ of great sensitivity” and depicts it as such – about 1/8 of its full length, without the roots which extend far back along the vaginal canal).

The MCIP points out further physical, financial, and cultural factors in the use of hormonal birth control, from a more global perspective:

Physical: “Side effects can include nausea, vomiting, headaches, moodiness, breakthrough bleeding, and breast tenderness” (MCIP website). MCIP also mentions bone thinning and prolonged bleeding (Depo Provera), weight gain, and limited use for breastfeeding women.

MCIP also mentions that “the Pill appears particularly problematic for South American women, who tend to experience more side effects because they tend to be significantly smaller, . . . than the North American women for whom the Pills are designed” (MCIP website).

In addition, there is the issue of interference with thyroid health, and a loss of interest in sex - a considerable disadvantage surprisingly not mentioned in standard texts. Apparently estrogen increases the sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) which also happens to bind with thyroid hormone. 10-15% of women already have thyroid disturbances. Even for those who don’t, the increase in estrogen from hormonal birth control can interfere with the vital functions of the thyroid, which is responsible for such important processes as regulating “mood, energy, and the function of nearly every organ in the body” (MCIP website). SHBG also binds to testosterone, which results in what MCIP kindly calls a “second contraceptive effect” – that of disinterest in sex.

Financial: When thinking of birth control, Westerners rarely think beyond their privileged pocketbooks. If we are really to decrease world population, birth control must be affordable to the poorest of women, which it is not: “Even at discounted rates, the monthly purchase of hormones from pharmaceutical companies is out of reach of the world’s poorest women” (MCIP website).

Ecological Implications of Hormonal Birth Control

With synthetic estrogens passing through urine into water systems, there is much cause for concern, since these estrogens affect fish and wildlife, and therefore the reproductive capacities of wildlife – where they then can get reintroduced into human systems through the food chain. The Male Contraception Information Project points out that “hormone mimics in the food chain are starting to have a negative effect on human reproduction as well.”

If we were to view the body as a microcosm of the earth, we would perhaps be more able to extend the metaphor of environmental degradation to the bodies of women, a guinea pig for many different versions of the technological fix. In her book Women as Wombs, Janice G. Raymond, asks, “Are women being exempted from the natural world as more and more bodily processes become subject to the medicalization of technical progress? Surely, a genuine ecological consciousness should spot this glaring pollution of women. If environmentalists are quick to recognize the mechanizing of nature, why are they so slow to recognize the pathologizing of women’s natural bodily processes?”

Where’s that Much-anticipated Male Pill?

This paper may seem a bit extreme. After all, the world is overpopulated and certainly we must curb our populations somehow. It’s time men shouldered some of the responsibility in this regard. It would seem a male pill would not be that hard to come by. We can fly to the moon and clone cows, but we still don’t have an effective male contraceptive aside from the condom and sterilization. Why haven’t we created a male pill yet? It would be nice if the reason were simply that we know from experience that hormonal methods in men would likely be as deleterious to physical and ecological health as they are to women.

But there are other reasons. In order for a hormonal product to be worth investment and research, it must be taken regularly (short acting), and must provide a profit. Pharmaceutical companies have not been able to create a pill for men that would replace the female pill market in profitability – yet. And until they do, it’s not likely to go on the market for the sake of others.

Just as simple, affordable technologies such as the neem plant and fertility awareness are not promoted because they do not make anyone money, so too there is no funding for research into a long-acting, low-cost male method, which “. . . . holds little appeal for a pharmaceutical company — especially if the man is in a committed relationship and his partner stops buying her Pills from the company every month. Thus, it is illogical to expect pharmaceutical companies to develop such a contraceptive. Its development falls squarely on the shoulders of government agencies and the nonprofit sector” (MCIP website).

Nonhormonal Male Birth Control Options
Do you love your woman enough to wear polyester underwear? The "electrostatic potential" in jock straps could kill sperm – but it also seems to be associated with reduced potency, perhaps “due to the electrostatic fields’ affect on intrapenile structures” (MCIP website). Polyester suspensory research may just be another dead end.
But there are numerous other potential non-hormonal forms of birth control, many of which hold some promise but which have either been stalled by lack of funding, have questionable side-effects, or have had mixed laboratory results. They include: immunological approaches (the body is tricked into attacking its own sperm); electrical shocks (disabling sperm for about ten days); the use of binding/penetrating enzymes (enzymes in sperm eat through the sugary coating of the egg – ingesting these enzymes early on could bind the sperm while they are still in the epididymis); silicone and polyurethane injectable plugs; a number of chemical substances that cause permanent sterilization by injection; and plant-derived substances, such as those from Carica papaya seeds, cloves, neem, and the Chinese herbal medicine Tripterygiumwilfordii (which incapacitates sperm partly by blocking the calcium channel).
While the MCIP does not extensively discuss Neem, I did come across some literature a while back on the effects of the neem plant on male (and female) fertility. The plant seems to be effective against pregnancy taken orally and injected into the vas deferens. These studies were done in the early nineties and I’m not sure why they haven’t become more widely known or pursued, especially since injection of neem also increased immune response. Sister Zeus, reporting on studies by Sharma, Upadhyay, and Vietmeyer, notes that “In a test of neem's birth control effects with members of the Indian Army, daily oral doses of several drops of neem seed oil in gelatin capsules were given to twenty married soldiers. The effect took six weeks to become 100 percent effective, it remained effective during the entire year of the trial and was reversed six weeks after the subjects stopped taking the capsules. During this time the men experienced no adverse side effects and retained their normal capabilities and desires. There were no pregnancies of any of the wives during the period of the study.”
Women at the Forefront of Nonhormonal Male Birth Control Research
Dr. Susan Benoff demonstrated in the mid-nineties that Nifedipine - a widely used high blood pressure medication – has a contraceptive effect in some men via the blockage of calcium channels in sperm membranes. There is some question as to how many nifedipine users become sterile, and to the reliability of the drug as a contraceptive. (I had a boyfriend who had used Nifedipine intermittently over the years in other partnerships. I appreciated his willingness to take it again, though his intense and sudden crankiness after about three days of use made him unappealing as a bedmate.) Potential also exists in the similarly-acting compound N-butyldeoxynojirimycin (Zavesca).
From the 30’s to the 50’s, pacifist; animal welfare advocate, and Swiss physician Martha Voegeli did extensive research conclusively indicating that heating the scrotum for 45 minutes in water at 116˚ Fahrenheit daily for three weeks effectively produced temporary sterility in men for a period of six months. Her program found no side effects on the men or in their future children. For longer sterility, the treatment is repeated. The adult pain threshold is generally considered to be 118˚, and many men find the experience pleasant.
Dr. Christina Wang’s work (with Ronald Swerdloff of the University of California, Los Angeles) is similar to Dr. Martha Voegeli’s work, in that it is fast and inexpensive, therefore receiving little in the way of research support because of its lack of potential for profit. Dr. Wang has shown that ten minutes of ultrasound results in six months of sterility. MCIP notes that this is one of the most promising non-hormonal options available, and describes the process this way: “. . . ultrasound waves (very short, inaudible sound waves) are used to heat the testes. The ultrasound waves are of the same type and intensity as those used by physical therapists to treat injuries. To use the method, a man first sits in a special chair with his scrotum in a cup of water. In the bottom of the cup is an ultrasound element, which heats the water about as hot as a hot tub. It has also been hypothesized that the ultrasound creates an ion exchange between the fluid in the seminiferous tubules and the rete testis, making the environment in the testes inhospitable for sperm formation. The method is painless.”
Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance (RISUG)
RISUG is a reversible procedure in which a polymer gel is injected into the vas deferens. The gel solidifies instantly and microscopically. The inside walls of the vas deferens coated with this gel killed sperm as they go by, bursting as they come into contact with the positive and negative charges on the polymer. Reversal is easy, and can be done after days, weeks, or years, when it is dissolved with an injection of DMSO. “Thus, fertility can be limited by one injection or restored by another. . . Standard dose lasts at least seven, and the men from the Phase II studies have been using their RISUG for more than a decade” (MCIP website).
Conclusion
Many nonhormonal birth control options are either already available or promising given more time and research. I still advocate for the partner-based birth control method mentioned at the beginning of this paper. The spiritual implications of being fully involved and responsible for one’s own fertility, and seeing this as a gift and an opportunity for communication and awareness, is a value that future generations might possibly enjoy in a culture that we create now by turning away from profit-driven pharmaceutical companies and consumerist sexual habits.

References

Memmler’s Anatomy & Physiology of the Human Body.

Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom, Janice G. Raymond, 1995.

The Male Contraception Information Project: http://www.newmalecontraception.org

Sister Zeus: http://www.sisterzeus.com/neem.html

Good to know! Thanks for pointing this out, Marnia.