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contraception
Reproductive Justice Is a Men's Issue, Too
If men are part of the pregnancy equation, and they are, then they must also be part of the solution by advocating for abortion rights and taking shared responsibility for contraception.
Jun 21, 2026
There is a dangerous myth embedded in the fight for reproductive justice: that the battle is solely about women, or even solely about those who can become pregnant. It is not. It is equally about men, especially those who hold power, and perhaps more critically, those who choose not to use it, because silence, in this moment, is not neutral. It is consequential.
Across the United States, reproductive rights are being dismantled by legislative bodies that remain overwhelmingly male. Men still make up roughly 73% of Congress, while some state legislatures, particularly those passing the most restrictive abortion bans, exceed 80% male representation. The result is accelerating policy built on distance: lawmakers regulating bodies they will never inhabit, consequences they will never personally endure.
As educator and activist Jackson Katz has long argued in his work, including his TED Talk “Violence Against Women, It’s a Men’s Issue,” gender-based injustices are too often framed as “women’s issues,” allowing men to disengage. Katz argues that the silence of men who consider themselves allies is itself part of the system that allows harm to continue. In the context of reproductive rights, that silence has had profound consequences.
And yet, there is a growing body of work challenging exactly this imbalance, calling attention to the role men play not just in policy, but in pregnancy itself. In Ejaculate Responsibly, author Gabrielle Blair reframes the abortion debate with striking clarity as an advocate for condoms and vasectomies; she says, “Women are expected to practice and learn how to use birth control, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to ask men to learn how to use their birth control options.” The premise is simple but often ignored: Pregnancy does not occur without male participation, and yet responsibility overwhelmingly falls on those who become pregnant.
This Father’s Day, men have a choice: to continue benefiting from silence and distance, or to finally recognize reproductive justice as their fight too.
Blair further notes that men are fertile continuously and capable of causing multiple pregnancies, while women and other people who can become pregnant have limited reproductive windows. Yet public policy overwhelmingly regulates the latter, not the former.
At the ground level, the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP) knows the human impact. Funding abortion care from coast to coast and working with more than 700 clinics nationwide, WRRAP supports thousands of patients each year, many navigating financial hardship, domestic instability, or complete abandonment by their partners.
WRRAP’s experience consistently reflects a painful pattern: Patients are often left carrying the financial burden alone after disclosing a pregnancy. Costs related to transportation, childcare, lodging, lost wages, and medical care frequently fall entirely on the pregnant person, even though pregnancy itself involves two people.
This is where the conversation about men must deepen, because while men are part of every pregnancy, they are often absent from its consequences. For WRRAP, 69% of patients have had their partner abandon them, placing the financial burden on the patient.
What would it look like if that changed? What if men were held financially accountable for pregnancies from the moment they occur, including the cost of abortion care? What if responsibility extended to ensuring that the pregnant person had the resources to make the decision that is right for them?
It is a question that exposes a fundamental inequity. The current system allows men, whether lawmakers or partners, to exert influence without bearing equivalent responsibility. They can legislate restrictions without experiencing the outcomes. They can disengage from pregnancies without absorbing the costs. And when they do neither, when they simply remain silent, the system continues unchecked.
The political reality is impossible to ignore. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, more than 1,500 politicians, overwhelmingly male, have supported abortion bans or severe restrictions.
Meanwhile, public opinion data from Pew Research Center show that a majority of men support legal abortion access in at least some circumstances. Yet support in polling has not translated into sustained advocacy, organizing, or political pressure.
Katz’s work emphasizes that change requires more than awareness, it requires action. Men must see themselves not as peripheral to this issue, but as central to it. They must challenge harmful narratives in their own circles, advocate for policies that protect access, and support organizations like WRRAP doing the work.
Because reproductive justice is not just about access to care, it is about who bears the burden. Right now, that burden falls disproportionately on pregnant people: those navigating financial instability, healthcare barriers, social stigma, and abandonment, often without support.
If men are part of the equation, and they are, then they must also be part of the solution. Not quietly. Not passively. But visibly, vocally, and materially invested in the fight for reproductive justice.
This Father’s Day, men have a choice: to continue benefiting from silence and distance, or to finally recognize reproductive justice as their fight too through advocacy, accountability, and even shared responsibility for preventing pregnancy, including vasectomies.
This piece was provided by American Forum.
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'Callous Waste': Doctors Without Borders Condemns Trump Plan to Destroy $9.7 Million Worth of Contraceptives
The CEO of Doctors Without Borders USA accused the Trump administration of being "willing to burn birth control and let food supplies rot... to push a political agenda."
Jul 24, 2025
International humanitarian assistance organization Doctors Without Borders on Thursday hammered the Trump administration's plan to destroy nearly $10 million of contraceptives that are badly needed throughout the world.
As The Guardian reported late last week, the Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that had been set to be delivered overseas as part of the foreign aid programs that it has been working to shut down.
"The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives," wrote The Guardian. "It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July."
In a statement condemning the decision, Doctors Without Borders described the Trump administration's actions as "callous waste that puts the health and lives of women and girls at risk."
"Contraceptives are essential and lifesaving health products," Avril Benoît, CEO of Doctors Without Borders USA, said. "[Doctors Without Borders] has seen firsthand the positive health benefits when women and girls can freely make their own health decisions by choosing to prevent or delay pregnancy—and the dangerous consequences when they cannot. The U.S. government's decision to incinerate millions of dollars' worth of contraceptives is an intentionally reckless and harmful act against women and girls everywhere."
Benoît accused the U.S. government of "manufacturing" the crisis by showing itself "willing to burn birth control and let food supplies rot, risking people's health and lives to push a political agenda."
The destruction of the contraceptives is part of the Trump administration's efforts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency established in 1961 under President John Kennedy that was intended to build American diplomatic power and goodwill across the world during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The decision to wind down USAID and other foreign aid programs has already had dire humanitarian consequences around the world.
A recent report from UNAIDS, the United Nations agency dedicated to combating the spread of HIV around the globe, warned that the Trump administration's drastic reduction of foreign aid funding to the United States President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been a "systemic shock" to organizations trying to stop the spread of HIV. The report estimates that if American funding for HIV prevention collapses entirely, it would result in 6 million additional infections and 4 million additional deaths over the next four years alone.
"This is not just a funding gap—it's a ticking time bomb," said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. "We have seen services vanish overnight. Health workers have been sent home. And people—especially children and key populations—are being pushed out of care."
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Dem Lawmakers Introduce 'Contraception Begins at Erection' Bills in Multiple States
"If you think it's absurd to regulate men, then you should think it's equally absurd to regulate women," said the author of an Ohio bill, who is also an OB-GYN.
Feb 11, 2025
Faced with relentless Republican attacks on reproductive freedom including efforts to give embryos and fetuses legal rights from the moment of conception, Democratic lawmakers in two states have recently introduced legislation that would ban men from ejaculating for purposes other than making babies, with some exceptions.
Last month, Mississippi state Sen. Bradford Blackmon (D-21) introduced S.B. 2319, the Contraception Begins at Erection Act, which would "make it unlawful for a person to discharge genetic material (sperm) without the intent to fertilize an embryo, effectively criminalizing certain male reproductive behaviors," according to an official artificial intelligence summary of the proposal. The bill—which died in committee last week—contains exceptions for "genetic material donated or sold to a facility for future embryo fertilization, and genetic material discharged using a contraceptive method intended to prevent fertilization."
"If you're going to penalize someone for an unwanted pregnancy, why not penalize the person who is also responsible for the pregnancy?"
"All across the country, especially here in Mississippi, the vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman's role when men are 50% of the equation," Blackmon explained, according to NBC News. "This bill highlights that fact and brings the man's role into the conversation. People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can't say that bothers me."
Meanwhile in Ohio, state Reps. Dr. Anita Somani (D-11) and Tristan Rader (D-13) have introduced their own Contraception Begins at Erection Act, which would fine violators $10,000 per unauthorized discharge, with exceptions for when contraception is used during sex, or in cases of masturbation, and sex between members of the LGBTQ+ community.
"If you're going to penalize someone for an unwanted pregnancy, why not penalize the person who is also responsible for the pregnancy?" Somani, who is also a licensed OB-GYN, asked in an Ohio Capital Journal article published Sunday. "You don't get pregnant on your own."
Every Sperm is sacred! #equalrights #reproductiverights
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— Anita Somani District 8 OH ( @anitamd.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Responding to Republicans who have called her bill "absurd," Somani said, "If you think it's absurd to regulate men, then you should think it's equally absurd to regulate women."
While observers have questioned the seriousness of these bills—and with Somani and others giving nods to a famous number in Monty Python's 1983 black comedy The Meaning of Life—they come at a nadir for reproductive freedom in the United States.
Since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Courtcanceled half a century of federal abortion rights in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, a dozen states including Mississippi have also passed near-total abortion bans, while numerous other states have enacted restrictions on the procedure.
Eight states have also enacted or proposed restrictions on access to contraception, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Last year, Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the Right to Contraception Act. Republican President Donald Trump has signaled support for federal restrictions on contraception, and far-right U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has suggested that the tribunal "should reconsider" past rulings upholding the right to birth control.
In Ohio, voters decisively enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution via a 2023 ballot measure. Nevertheless, anti-abortion activists haven't given up—Republican activist Austin Beigel told the Capital Journal that GOP lawmakers are preparing to introduce legislation for a total abortion ban in the coming weeks.
"It just says human life begins at conception," he explained. "Therefore, all the protections that are offered to other people under the state law are also offered to the pre-born."
This isn't the first time that semi-satirical legislation has been introduced to highlight the hypocrisy of banning women from controlling their bodies. In 2019, a Democratic state lawmaker in Georgia introduced a "Testicular Bill of Rights" that would, among other things, have required men to get permission from their sexual partners before obtaining erectile dysfunction medication and enacted a 24-hour "waiting period" for men who want to buy porn or sex toys.
Correction: This article orginially said the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" song is from Monty Python's 1979 dark comedy The Life Of Brian. It is, in fact, from the 1983 Monty Python film The Meaning of Life. The author—who still considers The Holy Grail the finest comedy ever made—apologizes for the error.
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