Male Contraception...What Can I Do?

A guest blog post from Olivia Sumerfield, MCI YAB member and student researcher 

Being a college student means exploring how the world works, and the exact holes of where it doesn’t. As a developmental biology student at UC Berkeley, I couldn’t help but see the biological holes that are integrated into our society– particularly in reproduction. For such a densely populated planet, humans have lots of issues with reproduction. Some people can’t get pregnant and others can’t STOP getting pregnant. As a female student, perhaps the largest hole I noticed was the discourse surrounding these issues– Why was it always about women? Where were the male contraceptives? Why are women blamed for both infertility and pregnancy? So this was the hole in our society’s fabric that I fastened myself to. 

The search for these answers began in an in-vitro fertilization lab, or IVF lab, at NYU’s Langone hospital. Here, I began to better understand these questions surrounding fertility, and had the startling realization that infertility is statistically equal between male and female partners, even though the conversation doesn’t always acknowledge that. 

These questions at NYU lead to further one's surrounding male roles in contraception. Naturally, I knocked on the neighbor’s door– Cornell’s Weill medical school, just 30 or so of Manhattan’s hot-dog-stand-spotted-blocks up– and assisted in research on a novel male contraceptive. Here I learned the specifics of what contraception is on the biological level, and just how many things we still don’t know. As the cliche goes, by learning one thing, I was left with 100 more questions. 

However, one of those questions continued to be at the forefront of my mind, and is one that all college students learning about the holes of how our world works encounter. We are taught and explained all of these gaps, but left with: what can we do about it? 

That is when I joined the Youth Advisory Board for male contraception. In this position, we offer advice, approve grantees, and act as a voice of youth predication within the Male Contraceptive Initiative (MCI). It gives traction to my optimistic and youthful excitement that wants to fill these holes– when someone asks, where is the male pill? I can point to a study or a grantee MCI has funded to support their research– one of them being the very lab I worked in.

MCI's Youth Advisory Board

Since joining MCI’s youth advisory board, I have continued to pursue this question of what can I do? I did a semester in DC, interning at the Senate, looking at policy surrounding the FDA, maternal healthcare deserts, and reproductive laws, all helping me understand the gender divides in how we approach reproduction. Next year, I’ll be completing a master’s in embryology to further delve into the molecular biological components of these questions. 

It is my sincerest hope to one day become a physician, where I can draw upon all of these experiences to see reproduction holistically; the contraceptives, the infertility, the male and female biological aspects, the laws, and how it all builds on one another– and be able to help patch some of those huge holes for my patients hoping to create the next generation.

Author

Olivia Sumerfield