When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the U.S. birth rate reached a new low, there was much speculation about the culprit — and potential solutions. Instead of investigating those causes, however, Americans who just learned their replacement rate had officially lagged to 1.6 children per woman were bombarded with headlines promoting yet another “promising” new male contraceptive pill.
The hormone-free YCT-529 pill aims to hamper sperm production. The scientists running the first round of clinical trials concluded last week that the chemical “had no effects on heart rate, hormone (follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, and testosterone), sex hormone-binding globulin or inflammatory biomarker levels, sexual desire or mood.”
Whether or not the pill actually does what it say is yet to be determined. Regardless, YCT-549 is already gaining interest and publicity. The addition of another birth control pill into a market saturated with a myriad of contraceptive contraptions, drugs, and even abortion, though, is nothing to celebrate.
It’s no secret that the widespread use of these pregnancy preventers and abortive practices has drastically impacted the nation’s fertility rate.
Sure, the roots of America’s increasing birth rate crisis, which only compounded the more industrialized the nation became, is complicated. The post-World War II baby boom further threw a wrench into the mix.
Many factors can affect societies’ fertility statuses, but there’s no denying that drugs claiming to prevent pregnancy have played a key role in keeping the number of kids couples have at a minimum. After the introduction of female oral contraception in 1960, the number of women getting pregnant and having babies took a real turn for the worse.
The more normalized that pill-form birth control, Margaret Sanger’s infamous abortion campaign, and society’s obsession with having sex without consequences (or blessings) became, the less people had babies. The rise in anti-kid rhetoric and more recent inventions such as the abortive “morning after” drug have only exacerbated the 65-year decline in births.
Additionally, male testosterone levels have taken quite a tumble.
As more men are experiencing tanking testosterone, which is crucial for sperm production, and a host of related side effects, their chances of successfully conceiving become limited. As a result, couples who struggle to get pregnant turn to ethically and morally problematic assisted reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy to achieve their dreams of becoming parents, which are not healthy fertility rate fixes.
The last thing men struggling to produce enough of the masculinity hormone and a nation struggling to produce enough babies need is to further interrupt bodies’ natural means of reproducing by seeking, even if not permanently, to stop manufacturing sperm.
The fertility rate plays a key role in preventing civilizational decline. Yes, the causes behind America’s falling birth rate are complicated. But potentially adding a male contraceptive to the mix certainly isn’t helping solve the problem.