Currently, contraception is seen, for obvious reasons, as a women's issue: Most women of traditionally child-bearing age use some form of contraception, and over 40 percent use a form that currently requires a prescription or a medical procedure. By contrast, vasectomies, the most commonly available form of medical birth control for men, have much lower adoption rates; it's estimated that in 2006, only 527,000 vasectomies were performed in the United States. It's not hard to see why, given the fact that they are surgical procedures and often irreversible, and hence discouraged for younger men who may change their minds about wanting to have children later in life.

Indeed, the birth-control mandate in the Affordable Care Act codifies the idea that contraception is specifically a women's issue: The law requires coverage of all FDA-approved forms of birth control that a woman's doctor can prescribe, including sterilization procedures such as tubal ligation, but it does not require that insurance policies cover procedures related to male reproductive capacity, such as vasectomies.

This mandate, of course, has been controversial. The religious and cultural impulse to control female sexuality has combined forces with the selfish ethos of libertarianism to oppose the mandate and to tell women that if they want contraception, they should have to pay for it on their own. But if a simple, inexpensive and easily reversible procedure for men—as Vasalgel purports to be—ever did come onto the market, this dynamic could shift, and put conservative opposition to birth control in a bind.

In this situation, birth control could very easily become equally the responsibility of men and women. And while the types like Rick Santorum, who oppose all forms of birth control on religious and moral grounds, would get the opportunity to remain internally consistent, it would be interesting to see how other conservative and libertarian groups would react if the contraceptive mandate came to cover the "male IUD" in addition to the forms of birth control used in women's bodies. While the plaintiffs in cases like Hobby Lobby could remain internally consistent by only opposing specific forms of birth control they consider to be abortifacients, less selective groups would suddenly find themselves in a position of either telling men what they can do with their own bodies, or admitting their own biases: that their efforts at limiting access to birth control were really all about denying and controlling the ability of women to govern their own sexuality.

On the down side, it is possible that the development of a safe and effective form of male contraception could open up a new front in the conservative war on women. As Allen noted, birth control via hormonal regulation is not without an entire host of deleterious side effects:



As WomensHealth.Gov notes, side effects of the birth control pill include an increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, nausea, irregular bleeding, and depression. Less common methods of contraception like diaphragms and sponges can cause the rare and life-threatening toxic shock syndrome (TSS). Injections like Depo-Provera can cause bone loss and the use of intrauterine devices (IUDs) can potentially cause rips or tears in the uterus itself. It would take a commercial announcer a full minute of speed-reading to list off all the risks of every form of female birth control. Interrupting ovulation and fertilization is a complex process that requires a degree of hormonal regulation, often impacting other areas of a woman’s health.

It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the usual groups that oppose sexual and reproductive freedom for women use the development of a safe, low-cost form of contraception for men that has few if any side effects to argue that female birth control is more dangerous and therefore unnecessary and should therefore be unsubsidized or perhaps even illegal. It would not come as any surprise to see the groups that have historically been so hostile to women turn around and pretend to be their biggest advocates in order to exercise a further measure of control. As a friend said recently, "It's not like the technology is going to make them moderate their crazy. They will always find reasons to be terrible."