The usual caveats being:
- No rape
- No Pakistani approaches or similar female imprisonment and inferiority
- No one-child policies
- For completeness, we consider that the woman isn’t playing dirty tricks like fishing condoms out of the trash can (although it does support the point, it’s not the line of thinking that is most important)
First, we remember that a relatively young woman requires only sperm, which easily can be obtained from dates, sperm banks, or male friends, with only the slightest of bothers to the male. Only if she is infertile/much older will she require a surrogate. A male requires both eggs and a working uterus, the latter of which requires him to secure the life-threatening cooperation of a woman in undergoing pregnancy and childbirth, which she is not required to give.
Further, consider the points both for women and men at which pregnancy can be avoided or terminated:
For a woman:
- She can dump her boyfriend at any time (or divorce, etc.), with some caveats relating to the economics of state marriage
- She can refuse to have sex when she is likely to be fertile
- She can choose surgical sterilization, but only if she never will want kids
- Most women can choose to use long-acting birth control, e.g. the pill, hormonal implants, IUDs
- A very large percentage of women can choose to use physical barriers such as condoms; moreover, a significant number of women can choose spermicides or other supplements
- She can tell her mate to pull out, although that’s not 100% effective for a variety of reasons, even under the caveats above which mean the guy sincerely tries to obey
- She can douche in case of an accident or change of intention
- She can choose to use Plan B/emergency contraception
- She can choose a mifepristone-based abortion early in her pregnancy; such drugs are easy to smuggle or obtain with a relatively small amount of cash
- With more difficulty, she may obtain a surgical abortion later in her pregnancy
- She may choose to give up her recently born child for adoption (as there continues to be strong demand for adopted babies)
For a man:
- He can dump his girlfriend at any time (or divorce, etc.), with some caveats relating to the economics of state marriage
- He can try to refuse to have sex when his partner is likely to be fertile, but that only works if she cooperates, since female periods are not that predictable
- He can choose vasectomy, but only if he never will want kids, as it is reversible in far less than 100% of the cases
- He does have the choice to use condoms (allergies aside); spermicides, etc. are a trickier consideration since it’s not his body into which they are going, so practically speaking he does not have the choice of all contraception methods, even if they are medically suitable to his woman
- He does have the choice to pull out/stop well short of likely sperm transmission
That is, the only times that a woman loses any control over the process of conception is when her man loses control and ejaculates inside her, or when condoms/birth control fail. Even so, she has several options to prevent that incident from leading to childbirth, all of which solely are decided by the woman.
By contrast, a man only can control conception by celibacy, sterilizing himself, using condoms, and pulling out well short of orgasm. Sterilization is not an option if he ever wants children, and the remaining options completely or significantly impair the enjoyment of sex. He has no control at all over carrying a baby to term.