to think a male pill would be one of the best things that could happen to society?

@IAmWhoIAmm Because men can simply walk away.

I think the same thats why im confused why so many people dont think men would take it. Women want to be parents more than men, the vast majority of men dont want to be fathers imo.

Men have choices now, vasectomy, abstinence, condoms. Why the fuck would any man take a pill that affects them when the actual effect of not doing so are minor. Its the fatherless children who suffer real harm not the men who father them.

The argument against this of course is that its giving agency to men in terms of the choice about having a baby. Yes there are feckless fathers out there, God knows, but the system we have now is that men have zero rights in terms of a woman's pregnancy. If she wants to terminate no one cares if he has a different view, he doesn't even have a right to know. Even if its a planned pregnancy within a marriage, he has zero choice. If she wants to keep it and he doesn't want it, he is the worst for even thinking this thought and he is either financially burdened for life with a child he didn't want or he becomes an absent useless father who doesn't pay for his child. My point is that if we want men to start taking more responsibility for preventing pregnancy then we need to offset that against increasing men's rights re the unborn, and I honestly don't think many women would support this.

I agree.

I don’t think most men actually want to be fathers.

@ToKittyornottoKitty I would not trust my husband to take it every day, and he himself would admit he would forget.
Secondly, the pill of course has a failure rate, even when taken absolutely correctly; it happened to me (and about two months after my husband's vasectomy as it goes and at 42!!)
For couples who absolutely do not want another pregnancy, by far the most reliable form of contraception is a vasectomy. Which also means hormonal contraceptives (which have many side effects and risk factors) can be stopped.

So what if many women wouldn't trust many men to take it? Having the ability for each to take charge of their own fertility can only be a good thing.

I would only support it if it was an additional layer of protection. Many men would take it but I'd say mostly men already in relationships when they either don't want kids or have already had kids. I can't imagine a single man taking it every day for months in the hope that he gets lucky some night

I do trust my husband but not with this. I don't even take the pill myself as I don't trust myself to remember

I would never trust a man to take a pill daily, not even my husband. Yes if it was a long term implant or injection.

Women who are married to people that they trust presumably.

In the new TLC comedy programme "Unacceptable" Katherine Ryan suggested that all baby boys should be vasectomised at birth and only have it reversed when they proved they were not arseholes.

In the end 49% of the audience agreed 😁

@ToKittyornottoKitty
And who would honestly trust a man taking a pill to the degree that they would stop taking the pill themselves?
I wouldn't!

I see no downside. Men should have the same ability to make informed choices about parenthood that women do. People here are pointing out they wouldn’t trust a man who said he was on the pill… well that’s exactly the situation men are in now. They have to trust their partners, and many women fail to take the pill correctly or outright lie about it. There is no downside to both parties being on contraception. Although personally I love my nexplanon. The pill is way too much effort to remember when to take it, when not to. Nexplanon for men?

What would be even more effective is if all men had to prove (via DNA) that they had not fathered the child and there was a minimum mandatory child support payment they had to pay(much larger than the bare minimum they can get away paying now), with failure to pay resulting in proper consequences.

I don't think it would be a bad thing in a committed relationship so long as the woman was fully aware and accepting of the pregnancy risks ( as chances are it wouldnt be foolproof).

But for casual sexual encounters I doubt many women would put any credence on a claim that a random guy was taking it. We'd still get unwanted pregnancies if he didn't take it at all or didn't take it reliably, eg not atvsame time as antibiotics and other issues. So only got a limited use to my mind.

I think there are other things that would address the issue of poor and absent fathers. Things we have left in the past as "old-fashioned" like the social stigma that used to be attached to being a bad husband and father.

They were talking about the possibility of a male pill when I was an undergraduate back in the late 70s and not one of us women said we'd trust a man to take it!

I’m very mixed on this one. Ideally it would be good, but would you trust a man you didn’t know very well if they said they were on the pill? And, as a PP said this would increase those not wishing to use condoms.

And there's the misogyny that women can't be trusted.

The point is, if a male pill existed, the woman still wouldn’t have to take the pill if she didn’t want to, the man would have an alternative option.