A concise reframing of the birth control issue...

[riqster]

I can't disagree with that.

[LittleBlue]

1. It's a matter of numbers

Women discharge one egg, the catcher only has to keep one ball from going to the backstop.

Men discharge 200 million, that's an awful lot for the catcher to deal with. One gets through and it's game over.

[riqster]

3. So we change the analogy a wee bit...

Shooting a machine gun at a bulletproof vest?

[jeff47]

2. Except it's pretty hard to stop sperm production

And pretty easy to stop egg release.

To use the same framing, it's easier to wear one bulletproof vest than to unload 10,000,000 guns every day.

[riqster]

4. Is that because of the underlying biochemistry involved,

Or is it because we have been focusing on stopping egg production, and have gotten to a certain point with it?

[jeff47]

5. Underlying biology

Women have a built-in "don't release an egg" system - pregnant women do not ovulate. Birth control pills make a woman's body think she's pregnant. (That's oversimplified, but is a reasonable one-sentence description).

Men have no "don't make sperm" mechanism. We start making them at puberty, and keep making them until death.

As a result, a male birth control pill has to create a new mechanism from scratch, which is a lot harder. And even one sperm is enough to cause a pregnancy (one sperm is very unlikely to do the job, but it's possible for it to get lucky)

[riqster]

6. Interesting. Thanks!

[LWolf]

8. Vasectomy.

My mother has frequently said that she thinks all males should have vasectomies when they hit puberty, since it's less invasive than a tubal ligation and it's reversible when they reach functional adulthood and are ready to choose fatherhood.

It certainly puts a different spin on choice.

[jeff47]

9. Not that reversible.

A vasectomy can be very effective, or it can be reversible. Not both.

Making it able to be reversed requires keeping the "tubes" near each other. That results in the vasectomy not being that effective - A non-trivial number of cases have reversed themselves.

But you're also talking about vasectomies among boys who are still growing, including their vas deferens. As a result, it should be more likely that the grow back together.

We could apply the same concept to women. Tubal ligation isn't reversible, but we have a fairly easy way around them - in vitro fertilization. With no self-reversal, it would probably be a more effective way to accomplish your goal. (At least until they can reverse vasectomies more easily so that they can make the reversible ones more effective)

[pipi_k]

7. At a family function

last night, there was general agreement that the best birth control was spending a few hours listening to the screaming, crying, kicking, food throwing, utensil banging on a plastic tray, and all around unpleasantness of a two year old who hadn't had a nap earlier in the day.

Not the kid's fault, I realize, but that doesn't mean the headaches and tension at the end of the evening weren't real.

Even the parents of said child admitted they might want to limit their family to just one child.

Not that this answers the question posed in the OP or anything. Or maybe it does. Subject people to that sort of thing and they just may get real serious about birth control no matter what their gender is.