A radical approach to birth control. Are you ready?

Women are programmed, by biology, to get pregnant and bear children. Men are programmed to implant their semen, bearing sperm, into women to ensure that they become pregnant. It's the way our species and all other species procreate and keep our lines going.

But women today don't always want to get pregnant every time they have sex. Sometimes they just want to have sex for the sheer pleasure of it. But every time a male ejaculates into their vagina, the possibility of getting pregnant exists.

We don't have to get into the whole disturbing problem of women who have been impregnated by men they don't see as future mates -- rape, for sure, but even a one-night stand -- to know that having sex, just because it feels good, shouldn't have such dire consequences for the woman in question.

Isn't there a way we can improve on the old biology of it?

For instance, why not innoculate our daughters -- our sons, too, if we can figure out how to do it -- with some kind of shot that renders them all, at the age of probable conception -- eleven, twelve? -- with something that makes them infertile?

Consider it as a shot, or an implant, that we would give our pre-pubescent daughters, or our lusty young sons, that would render them incapable of becoming pregnant or impregnating anyone? Think of it as an on/off switch. If you want to get pregnant, turn it on. Otherwise, leave it off and have sex as you see fit -- being careful about diseases -- but taking your time
trying to find your ideal mate.

Right now the biological default is toward pregnancy: you have sex often enough, you're bound to get pregnant sooner or later. Somebody's sperm is going to find its way to your ovaries at the wrong time of the month -- and suddenly you're on your way to being a mother, like it or not.

It doesn't have to be that way. Of course we have the pill and condoms and other means of birth control, but men and women don't always use them. In so many parts of the world, including here in the sophisticated U.S. of A., young girls get "knocked up" all the time -- and the dads often skirt right out of view. And we all, the taxpayers -- you and me -- end up paying for all those welfare benefits, etc.

Why not use science to come up with a way to stop fertilization in its tracks? Implant young girls with something that keeps them from becoming pregnant in the first place? And then give them a way to turn off that device when they really do meet Mr. Right and want to have kids?

I'm not sure if we have the ability to do this, but I can assure you that if men were the ones having unwanted children, hauling them around in their bodies and then delivering them, often in great pain, we would have had a solution to this problem long ago. Men are wimps when it comes to pain and responsibility. Take it from me: I'm one of them.

So here's my proposal: Let's come up with a vaccine or implant or whatever that renders all pre-pubescent girls, eleven or twelve years old (guys later, but let's work on it) infertile. In short, they can't get pregnant. Right now, according to biology, they can. But we're short-circuiting that and saying they can't. So if some one rapes them -- be it a degenerate father or a member of some outlaw band in their own country -- they will certainly suffer the psychic wounds but won't end up pregnanat. They are, until they decide otherwise, infertile. No eggs, no baby.

But, as I said before, let's have a switch they can turn when and if they really do want to conceive with a certain guy (Mr. Right). Whatever the mechanism, they could do it. Un-plug this or plug in that. Take some drug or stop taking some drug. Whatever.

Wouldn't this liberate women in a way that hasn't happened since the advent of The Pill?

I don't know if it's possible, but I'll bet it is. Check with your doctor. Write your Congress person. Women's liberation is entering a new era. Freedom from unwanted pregnancy!

Spread the word!

And long live the wonderful women in my life and the others I haven't had the privilege of knowing!