Opinion | Are We Finally Ready for a Male Contraceptive?

Writing for Gizmodo earlier this year, Ed Cara called NES/T “the field’s most promising option in years.” He also quoted Dr. Wang, who said that men’s attitudes have evolved: “Things have changed a lot since we first started working on this. The men that come into this study really wanted to take up responsibility.”

There is also a need for tweaking methods that already exist to create new products and reach underserved populations, said Kirsten Vogelsong, a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is one of the biggest global funders of contraceptive R. & D. In low- and middle-income countries, Vogelsong explained, daily pills that are a popular method among American women might not be practical. So the method the foundation is working on with a biotech company is a pill that needs to be taken only monthly. It contains the same types of hormones that are in a daily pill, so the same set of side effects would apply.

Another hot spot for innovation is in injectables, like the Depo-Provera shot, Vogelsong said. ”Injectables aren’t very popular in the U.S., but they are the No. 1 method used in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa for a variety of reasons,” she noted. “One of the reasons is that women can use an injectable without anyone else knowing.” It’s discreet, so if you have a partner or a community that doesn’t approve of birth control, you can still take it.

Vogelsong said the most popular injectable lasts for three months, and researchers are working on a six-month product, along with the next generation of injectables, which they are calling microarray patches or microneedles. Instead of one long needle injecting the medication, the application would be “more like a Band-Aid with a lot of tiny, micro-size projections that release drug in your skin even after you remove the patch or the bandage,” Vogelsong explained. This would make application easier and less painful, and would require less reliance on a health care provider because you could apply the patch yourself.

Unfortunately for my rapidly shriveling 41-year-old eggs, it’s doubtful that any of these innovations will reach the market in time to be of use to me. But I find it heartening that they could be of use to other women not too far in the future, and that men seem more willing to take an active role in controlling fertility than they previously may have been.

Vogelsong told me that she is feeling optimistic. “I’ve been working in this field for 25 years, and so in the last three to five years, the amount of conversation around contraceptive research and development — and the conversations around women’s health more broadly” are finally “breaking the surface, and now really being taken more seriously,” she said.