Whose responsibility is contraception?

Macdoctor has responded to a story in the Herald about a shortage of Depo-Provera a contraceptive injection. I'm not going to rant about this, other than to say Pharmac and Pfizer need to have better systems in place to ensure that one rejected shipment doesn't result in a 2 weeks of no product. But I do want to pull out one quote from his post which I think discussing:

Pregnancy most assuredly has a “fault” side to it. Pregnancy has consequences for both men and women. Should the woman be allowed to have an abortion if she has been intentionally reckless? Should the man have to pay child support if the woman doesn’t tell him she may not be protected against pregnancy? These are ethical questions that arise purely because of the issue of responsibility.

His comments seem to be based on basic premise that medication and responsibility for fertility isn’t a male responsibility, it’s the women's, and you’d best not forget that. Yes in the end women are the ones that end up getting pregnant and have the 'luck' of determining whether their pregnancy continues or not. But unless they are carrying the son of god, their eggs didn't fertilize themselves. And given how many men resist paying child support for their progeny, you'd think that men would be just as keen to take responsibility for minimizing risk of an unplanned pregnancy through the simple act of using a condom.

But in my experience that is not the case. Although my sample size is not huge (and I'm not revealing the magic number on the internet), there is a sizable chunk of straight male population who would prefer not to use a condom if they can avoid it. The most common reason seems to be a diminished sensation whilst doing the deed and having stop in the middle of getting hot and heavy and put one on was also a common reason to avoid their use.

During my 'asian years' the situation was even worse. I was surprised how many men I slept with in Korea assumed that I must be a slut because I carried and *shock* knew how to use a condom. My fellow male expats also had a similar bizarre situation where their partners would be offended if they suggested a condom because that must mean they are 'dirty' girls. Then throw in one large global misinformation campaign on condoms effectiveness and it is little wonder that condoms have a bad wrap amongst large sections of the population.

But surely male forms of chemical contraception are on the way right? Umm no. Over the past few years the big pharmaceutical companies have halted their studies of this. Why? Too expensive and apparently big pharma thinks guys don't want it. But if even a small percentage of sexually active men agreed to try a new method of birth control, that would represent a huge number of potential consumers and I'm pretty sure that someone somewhere could come up with an effective way to market 'have plenty o' sex and no babies' to men. So why we are in a bizarre position of having a major industry deciding that men - millions of whom manage to do things every day which require more effort and less potential reward than birth control - are simply uninterested and incapable of swallowing a tiny pill on a daily basis or go in for shots every month or so?

One the of the reasons for the hold-ups for drug development in this case is actually legitimate: a significant number of men don’t actually respond to hormonal birth control, leaving it fully effective in the majority of cases where it does work, and completely ineffective in the ones where it doesn’t. But even when fully effective male chemical birth control becomes available, based on big pharma's attitude and that around condom useage there’s still significant male resistance to the idea.

Any form of male birth control is going to involve doing something to a man’s sperm—stopping ejaculation completely (but not orgasm) or causing no sperm to be made or released, or keeping them from maturing. And I think that on a deeper level many men would be uncomfortable with chemicals messing with their swimmers because they think that their virility and therefore their masculinity would be compromised if they weren't just a few strokes away from producing a baby.

On the otherhand, women are expected to just accept chemical interference with their reproductive systems as a matter of course. We all know that motherhood and pregnancy and fecundity are strongly linked to our ideas of womanhood just as much as they are for men yet female chemical birth control (or was that period control) is one of the more popular forms of birth control. However the male version still seems to be years away and not many people think that they would take it.

Which leads me back to my original question: whose responsbility is contraception?

Discuss.