#Male birth control software#
#Male birth control trial#

By 1965, 25 percent of married women under 45 had tried it, signaling a new era for women having greater power over their reproductive system. In 1960, the FDA approved the sale of an oral contraceptive. In the 1940s and ‘50s, she followed the scientific development of birth control, throwing her weight and money behind research efforts. A first-wave feminist, Sanger opened the country’s first birth control clinic in 1916. boytaro Thongbun / 500px/500Px Plus/Getty Imagesįor many, the name Margaret Sanger is synonymous with birth control. It might come as a surprise that research behind hormonal male birth control is about as old as the pill.

*Those who produce sperm - while women and men will be shorthand for these terms in this piece, some men don’t produce sperm, have XY chromosomes, or two testicles, and some women don’t ovulate, have XX chromosomes, or a uterus - whether they’re queer, intersex, and/or have a condition that affects their reproductive traits. What has it taken so long and are we close to an effective and safe male birth control? With safe, legal abortion no longer available to all Americans, everyone deserves a tool to create responsible sexual partners in pregnancy prevention. Wade, effectively ending Americans’ constitutional right to abortion. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. The other one is a permanent surgical procedure. One of those has an 85 percent effectiveness rate, and many people choose to forego it. Right now, men have just two birth control options, both non-hormonal: condoms and vasectomy. There’s a glaring lack of reliable reversible contraceptives for men* while a buffet of pills, patches, implants, and more are available to women**, along with their myriad side effects. To say it has been a long time coming is an understatement. If the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves this progress, NES/T will become the first hormonal male contraceptive to enter Phase 3 clinical trials. The participants use the gel as their only form of birth control for a year.

#Male birth control trial#

It’s estimated to be completed in 2023 or 2024 with a Phase 3 trial beginning soon after. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is in the final year of enrollment of NES/T’s Phase 2 clinical trial, which began in 2018 and involves about 420 monogamous couples at 15 sites around the world. It’s called NES/T (“nes-tee”) after its two components, nestorone and testosterone.

#Male birth control software#

Seth, 34, a software engineer, spent 16 months on the new birth control, which comes in a gel that users apply to their back. When she and Seth learned about a clinical trial for male birth control in May 2019, they leaped at the opportunity. After the birth of her and Seth’s first child in 2018, she got a copper IUD, but that gave her “periods on steroids,” she says. “We joke that it was like he was a teenager again,” says Caitlin Kinast, Seth’s partner.Ĭaitlin Kinast, a 34-year-old full-time mother of two in suburban Seattle, stopped using all hormonal birth control after suffering a bilateral pulmonary embolism in 2013. He no longer crashed in the afternoon and his sex drive improved dramatically.

When Seth Kinast started taking an experimental male birth control, his energy levels shot up.