Dialogue: Who will trust men to take over birth control?

In five years, a male contraceptive pill which the World Health Organisation claims could revolutionise birth control will be available.

We certainly have to applaud this triumph of medical science as well as the fact that it theoretically could remove the burden of contraception from women. However, it will take some serious changes in attitude before the revolution will be under way.

A male contraceptive pill will effectively switch the role of men from poacher to that of gamekeeper. So these men - previously the very mechanism that triggered pregnancy - will become the protectors from it. Talk about a role reversal. It's a surreal paradigm shift to be sure.

The big question, of course, is whether men can be trusted. Will they take their new role as pill-popper seriously? Possibly, but on the other hand some men can't even see the milk carton in the fridge door when they look for it.

Most men just are not detail-oriented. It's easy to imagine that religiously taking this vital dose of hormones might be beyond the capabilities of a few of them.

The male pill is being hailed as an alternative to condoms but there is one crucial difference: you can trust a man to use a condom because at least you can verify that he is using one. Somehow a verbal assurance in the heat of the moment that a man has been taking his daily pills doesn't have quite the same credibility.

And, more importantly, would any woman determined to remain pregnancy-free want to leave it to the good intentions of her bloke? Women can rely on themselves in this regard because they are the ones who bear the brunt of any contraceptive lapse. They are the ones who have to face the repercussions through the years.

Men just don't have the same motivation to ensure that conception is averted. In our society, many men can seamlessly escape the inconvenient side-effects of recreational sex. Why would they need a pill to ensure this?

Many absentee fathers who refuse to take responsibility for their procreation already get off absolutely free and have their children supported by a benevolent state. Where is the need to use a preventative like a male pill when there is already a convenient safety net at the bottom of that particular cliff?

Similarly, when marriages break up, the woman is almost invariably the one who gets the children while the man skips off child-free to start all over again with a younger model. And when that union turns sour, he can bail out from it, too, usually with no troublesome offspring to impede him.

Neither do men have to endure nine months of pregnancy or a physically arduous labour and childbirth. Nor 99 per cent of the time are they the ones who turn their lives around when a baby arrives to embrace a routine of changing nappies, wiping runny noses and checking scalps for nits.

And, significantly, it is no coincidence that the female pill is the most popular contraception of all. It's not just because it has a high success rate, it's also because it is invisible to men and they have no need to clear space in their rugby trivia-filled brains to bother with such messy issues as not conceiving. That is women's stuff and they are mostly relieved not to have to know about it.

The instant that one single side-effect is reported about this male pill, there will be an uproar that sees it withdrawn from the market and millions of dollars paid out in compensation.

Can't you just imagine it? The first slight weight gain or minuscule headache will seem like the end of the world to most blokes.

Never mind that for years women have been struggling to balance the convenience and effectiveness of the female pill against well-documented and serious side-effects and high-profile fatalities.

So until the structure of our society changes, until more men take responsibility for raising children, until fewer men abdicate responsibility for their progeny, until a marriage breakup does not mean that men escape the children as well as the wife, until men are prepared to risk the occasional side-effect, until women are prepared to relinquish responsibility for birth control, the male pill is nothing more than a nice idea that will not work in practice.

It's kind of lucky then that we've got five years to sort it all out. We will need every spare moment - and then some.

* Shelley Bridgeman is an Auckland writer.