Making sure a guy wears a condom can sometimes be a bit of an uphill battle, but asking him to plug up his sperm and/or take a birth control pill might be just a tiny bit harder.

Although nothing like the aforementioned methods are on the market yet, scientists are busily researching ways to make men more active in pregnancy prevention.

At the second annual “Future of Male Contraception” conference held in Seattle this week (seriously, they have those?) sponsors such as the National Institute of Health and World Health Organization eagerly watched as new guy-based contraception inventions were unveiled.

Some of the new developments revealed were:

• The Intra Vas Device, “a set of removable plugs [which] block sperm in the vas deferens, the tube that’s cut in a vasectomy”.

Oh, I’m sure the guys will be lining up for this little procedure! Plugging up tubes in the body doesn’t sound comfortable, either. It kinda sounds like your balls would be constipated, no? Lovely, I’m sure.

• SARM (Selective Androgen receptor modulator), a “Testosterone-like pill” recently used as a muscle-wasting treatment that may also lower sperm count.

Awesome! So basically this is going to turn your man into a testicle-less non-man? Please tell me no. Read More »

Good news for all of us sexually active birth control laden ladies. Studies show that our trusty BC may now protect against cancer! Just like tofu, but not like tanning beds!

According to the recent British study, which looked at 46,000 women over a 36-year period, taking the pill cut the risk by 12%. A whopping 12%!

Of course, there are the downfalls (there are always the downfalls.) If you take the pill for less than 8 years, you are covered in that measly 12%. If you take it for more than eight years, the study showed that the likelihood of cancer was raised 22%.

While breast cancer was not included in the decreased risk category, bowel, ovarian and uterine cancer was reduced in the ladies taking the pill for less than 8 years.

Finally, just a tiny bit of good news for the large percentage of women that have HPV. If, of course, you didn’t start doing it when you were 15, because a decade of birth control use can double your chances of getting uterine cancer. Read More »

Though we’ve been led to believe otherwise by movies and dramatic episodes of Dawson’s Creek, let’s face it—sex can be awkward.

Instead of perfect lighting that makes you look hotter than Heidi Klum, you have your date’s lava lamp casting a faint glow on your cellulite. You don’t always fall effortlessly into bed, your bodies completely in sync. Sometimes you have to move your cat, half-eaten can of Pringles, and dog-eared copy of “He’s Just Not That Into You” out of the way first.

Passionate tearing off of clothing? Sure, sometimes.

But then there are those times where he’s fumbling with your bra clasp for so long that you don’t even help him because you’re curious to see how long it’ll take. Read More »

Okay, I’m pretty sure that the last people to ever use “Sponges” as a contraceptive method were our moms…maybe our grandmas. Well, that might be a little overdramatic. I think Elaine on Seinfeld was the last person to discuss their death on that famous Sponge episode. And seriously, the thought of using a Sponge nowadays is as obsolete as the idea of boy bands making a comeback.

So, it came as a surprise to me when I saw an article in the New York Times reporting that “The Sponge is Back, With a More Modern Approach.”

Apparently, the pharmaceutical company has updated the packaging for the Today Sponge from conservative and feminine looking to pictures of “hip-looking women, playful typography, and colors that officials call ‘fuchsia and wine.’”

Interesting marketing ploy, but I have a hard time believing that young women will start using the Sponge again, mainly for the statistics of inefficacy.

“16 percent of American women who had never given birth and may have used the sponge incorrectly or inconsistently became pregnant within a year, while 32 percent of women who had given birth and used the sponge this way became pregnant. The pregnancy rate for women who relied on condoms for birth control and may have used them incorrectly or inconsistently was 15 percent, while the rate for women using birth control pills in this way was 8 percent.” Read More »

Bad news for horny college girls.

According to the Wall Street Journal, colleges and universities are gonna stop selling birth control at the same discounts they’ve been giving us for years, which is gonna be pretttttty costly. And, surprise surprise…who is the cause of this madness?

Our president!

“The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.” Read More »

Forget birth control, forget condoms. I have found IT. And by IT I mean the foolproof way to stop teenage/unwanted pregnancies, stop the spread of std’s, hell–it might even stop you from wanting to have sex (I said might). Okay, all of the above may put Maury Povich out of a job- but I’m pretty sure my idea is like, uh, genius. How come no one has ever thought of this before? Sure all those conservative-good-Christian-political people preach teaching abstinence only education as a way to stop std’s and pregnancies out of wedlock (which is clearly not working in this country) and those a bit more liberal preach the importance of teaching safe sex practices and forms of birth control. I am not discounting that. BUT I do think my idea is a fantabulous new way to put a halt to this “who’s my baby-daddy” nonsense going on in our society right now.

Where did this brilliant idea come from? Wellllll, moving back home for the summer has made my Friday and Saturday nights … different (to say the least). I have traded in shots and bar crawls for yoga class and early bird movies. Partayyy, I know. The past two nights, I have seen Knocked Up and Waitress, both which have given me the inspiration for a new found form of birth-control. Read More »

Everyone knows that sex without a condom is better than with that thin latex lining. According to guys it “feels amazing” and is “probably the best thing on earth.” But we also know that no matter how good it is (better than fat free cheese cake for sure), it isn’t good enough to risk getting pregnant and spending our days playing peek-a-boo instead of beer pong.

Enter the birth control pill.

Seems like the perfect fix. 99.9% effective (when taken correctly, ladies) and no annoying de-sensitizing barrier to get in the way of some good old fashioned sex. It is probably the best thing to be invented since the wheel (though I would argue the Oh-My-Bod is totally up there), so it always comes as a huge surprise to people when I say that I really truly hate taking the pill.

“WHAT? WHY? HOW??!” you ask. Here are my top 10 reasons: Read More »

Sex is a wonderful thing. I don’t need to tell you that. Spontaneous sex is even better; more excitement, more danger and none of that boring planning that goes into the regular stuff (like getting a condom).

But after my experiences this past week, spontaneous (and maybe even super safe) sex is totally. Out. Of the question.

I spent my entire last weekend watching three children. Six-year-old twins and a potty-training three-year-old. And it only took me a total of 4 minutes to realize just how unready I am for child rearing.

Somewhere between the mini van and the screaming and the multiple trips to McDonalds (which somehow all ended in tears and ketchup all over my brand new jeans), I learned just how horrible the idea of getting pregnant could be. And for those of you out there who continue to have unprotected sex, STDs are not the thing to fear – this is:

1. No Showers: There is just no time. And if you manage to find 5 minutes in the day to leave the kids by themselves, you will most likely come out to find mass destruction, a child crying or both. Read More »

If there weren’t already a million and one reasons to use protection, there’s now one more. A recent study by the CDC has shown that many cases of gonorrhea have become resistant to the drug used for treatment.

What’s even scarier about this is between 700,000 and 800,000 people are infected with gonorrhea each year. I don’t know why this is—I imagine it’s because you’re already fighting a virus—but women infected with gonorrhea are more likely to contract HIV. I searched around for a little bit to try and figure out exactly why this is, and didn’t find a clear explanation. So, if someone knows enlighten me.

Reading the statistics about this can be slightly disarming. I didn’t know that women who take birth control are four times more likely to contract an STD. What else… Nearly 50% of sexually active women contract HPV in their lives. That’s a lot! Women are also more succecptable to STDs.

I don’t want to be preachy, but at this point, we should all know better than to not protect ourselves. Sometimes, it can be easy to get carried away and caught up in the moment, but there are so many things out there now that it’s not worth it. Besides—there are an array of fun condoms out there. I kind of want to try this vibrating one…

Like most college girls, I don’t want to carry a bun in the oven for 9 months or pop out a 7 lb. person anytime soon. So I choose to be a user of the birth control pill.

Now I’d like to think that this country wants to decrease the instances of unplanned pregnancies, because that usually leads to the issue of abortion (don’t worry, I’m not going there). However, pro-choice, pro-life, whatever pro anyone may be, we’d all like to decrease the amount of abortions. Read More »