Dusenbery, M. (2019, May). Why Women-and Men-Need Better Birth Control. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-women-and-men-need-better-birth-control/

This article by Scientific American talks about why men and women need better contraceptive options and better quality contraceptives. The best birth control there is for women today is the IUD. IUDs work well for many women, and there has been in an increase of IUD insertion before Trump was elected. Although many women use the IUD and have had great results several women also experience side effects and sometimes debilitating ones. IUDs have negative side effects that other contraceptive methods do not. The IUD irritates the uterus but it is the best birth control method out. The IUD is rarely ever used for the complete time period it is effective for which could be three to twelve years. “After one year nearly 20 percent of copper IUD users and about 14 percent of hormonal IUD users reported they were “not satisfied” with the device; 12.5 and 16 percent, respectively, had had it removed.”  After about five years the percentage goes up to 44.1 percent for the copper IUD and 48.3 percent for the hormonal IUD—users had discontinued the device. The reason usually being because of pain, period changes and other side effects or because the women has ended up in the hospital due to the IUD being “expelled from their body” or lodged into the uterus. There has been some major advances in a form of birth control for men, they are aspiring to be in higher standards than the women contraceptives.

An aspect that I found interesting about this article is that they included men contraceptives as well. People usually think of just women when it comes to birth control when it really should be a two person responsibility so it is great that they are beginning to create a male contraceptive that is not just condoms. Another aspect that I liked about this article is that the author, Dusenbery, explains how although there are many options for birth control all of them are flawed. They all have side effects that vary from nausea, to heavy bleeding, or ends up resulting in a visit to the emergency room.

   This article was very well written and the author used language that was simple enough for the audience to be just about anyone who is interested in birth control. Dusenbery also provides lots of information on long term uses of the “best and most effective” birth control method there is, and although it is praised by many people it is deeply flawed and many people remove it early.