Hallelujah and praise the Norns, it seems there might finally be an effective form of AMAB birth control on the horizon. It’s fast-acting, effective, and without the terrible side effects that got the last for-AMAB-use contraceptive cancelled! It’s a dream come true, especially for potentially fertile couples where hormonal birth control is off the table for the AFAB partner, but neither person is willing to permanently end their fertility yet.

The potential contraceptive was discovered almost by accident in 2018, while testing an experimental drug for the treatment of eye disease. It works by stopping sperm development in its tracks. But the effect only lasts for a limited time: two and a half hours in mice, with twelve hours projected for a human being. This allows normal sperm development to resume in a same-day window. Best of all, no hormonal fiddling is required, as the drug instead targets an enzyme, soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC). It seems sAC can be safely blocked for discrete periods of time without any ill effects on the subject.

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