Hear the phrase “reproductive politics” and sperm likely won’t be the first thing that comes to mind.
But in a provocative new collection of essays, Yale sociologist Rene Almeling and a group of co-editors argue that a deeper understanding of the relationship between sperm, health, and politics is necessary to enable a more reproductively just society.
The book, “Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics” (New York University Press), features essays by experts from across the social sciences, humanities, law, and medicine on the relationship between sperm, health, and the intersecting politics of gender, race, and reproduction.
They examine a range of topics, including the latest technological developments for creating sperm; the specter of eugenics in contemporary medical markets; emerging approaches to male contraception, male infertility, and trans health care; and controversies surrounding sperm donation and sperm banking.
In her award-winning 2020 book, “GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health” (University of California Press), Almeling traced how the medical profession has historically paid little attention to male reproductive health and examined the implications of this gap for individuals, the health care system, and society more broadly. After its publication, she connected with Lisa Campo-Engelstein, chair of bioethics and health humanities at the University of Texas-Medical Branch, and Brian T. Nguyen, an OBGYN and program director for the fellowship in complex family planning at the University of Southern California, who were also studying male reproductive health. The three began a conversation that ultimately led them to coedit the new volume.
Almeling, professor of sociology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently spoke with Yale News about the need for interdisciplinary conversations on male reproductive health, the prospects for integrating male reproductive healthcare into the American health system, and the potential for new male contraceptives coming to market. The interview has been edited and condensed.
The book includes think pieces from an interdisciplinary group of scholars representing a broad range of disciplines. How did it come together?
Rene Almeling: The first step was a series of Zoom chats during the height of the pandemic with Lisa Campo-Engelstein and Brian T. Nguyen, both of whom I was meeting for the first time. From those initial discussions, we decided to organize an interdisciplinary workshop at Yale on issues surrounding male reproductive health, with the hopes it would lead to an edited volume.
We argue in the book that sperm is both biological and social, which is why it is so important to engage thinkers from multiple disciplines. We ended up hosting about 35 scholars from a variety of fields, including sociologists, philosophers, law professors, and physicians trained in a range of different specialties.
We asked everyone to write a thousand words on what they thought of as the most important issues in the United States at the intersection of sperm, health, and politics. We circulated the draft essays to all participants before we met, which meant that people walked in the door having made an initial argument. And everybody had a sense of everybody else’s stance. After the workshop, each author revised their think piece based on our day of interdisciplinary conversation, and the book took shape from there.
What are some potential avenues for reframing our conception of reproductive health to include men?
Almeling: If we continue to think about reproduction as solely a “women’s issue” or women’s responsibility, we’ll miss an important part of the reproductive equation. Several essays focused on how to incorporate male reproduction into the health care system and reproductive politics. There is just no easy answer to those questions. While “reproductive health” is technically a gender-neutral term, most of the people who provide it are trained as OBGYNs and only treat those assigned female at birth.
It requires a systematic overhaul of medical education, medical specialization, and the provision of medical care. Several physicians who contributed to the volume shared different ideas for how to do that. Pediatricians David Bell and Arik Marcell each wrote an essay based on their decades of work incorporating teen boys into reproductive and sexual health care and education. Brian T. Nguyen, one of the co-editors, also contributed an essay about his innovative EMERGE Framework, where he details how different aspects of OBGYN care can be translated for male bodies.
[W]e still live in a world in which most contraceptive technologies work in or on women’s bodies, and there remain few options for men.
Andrologist Christopher De Jonge wrote about his efforts in co-founding the international Male Reproductive Health Initiative, which focuses on the need for more biomedical research about sperm and male infertility. Male infertility was also the focus of essays by Yale urologist Stan Honig and psychologist William Petok, each of whom have held numerous leadership positions in their respective fields, from which they have advocated for more attention to men’s reproductive health.
How do different contributors approach the topic of reproductive rights and justice when it comes to sperm?
Almeling: Even as one of our goals was to spotlight the variety of issues that arise when placing the terms “health” and “politics” in relation to sperm, I think we were all surprised by just how many different social and political issues the authors raise. To mention just a few, there are essays about reproductive surveillance of formerly incarcerated men, how eugenic thinking shapes trans fertility care, the complexities in sperm donation especially after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the refusal to offer vasectomies in Catholic hospitals, which now serve a stunning one out of every six patients in the United States.
Truly, every essay in the book is well worth reading and thinking about. Speaking just for myself, I think one of the most intriguing conceptual developments that emerged from this project is in an essay written by Krystale Littlejohn, a sociologist at the University of Oregon.
She takes up the commonly used framework of reproductive justice, which consists of three core elements defined by women-of-color-led organizations in the 1990s: the right not to have children, the right to have children, and the right to parent one’s children in safe communities. In her essay, Professor Littlejohn examines whether and how these can be applied to men, given that they cannot become pregnant and should not be allowed to impinge on the autonomy of those who can. Mobilizing another key concept from medical anthropology, she develops a new approach she calls “stratified reproductive justice,” which I think will be enormously useful for both scholars and advocates working in these areas.
Male contraception is covered in several essays. What’s happening in terms of providing men new contraceptive options?
Almeling: Well, there have been efforts to develop a male birth control pill since at least the 1950s. And since at least the 1950s, clinicians have been saying it’s just around the corner. But we still live in a world in which most contraceptive technologies work in or on women’s bodies, and there remain few options for men.
That said, there is a lot happening in this area, with many different technologies being developed and a number of clinical trials underway. One of the essays is written by Logan Nickels, chief research officer at the Male Contraceptive Initiative. And co-editor Lisa Campo-Engelstein argues that there is an ethical and public health need to develop long-acting reversible contraceptives for men. She identifies some of the primary benefits as enhancing men’s reproductive autonomy and responsibility as well as advancing gender equality.
How do the perspectives expressed in the book square with the current political landscape concerning reproductive health care?
Almeling: Honestly, publishing this book at this moment feels fraught in a couple of ways. First, the entire infrastructure for producing knowledge about health and protecting public health is under attack by the federal government. Scientific labs are being defunded, and scholars and scholarship are being threatened in completely unprecedented ways. We conceived this book in 2023, and it is being published in June 2025, which feels like an entirely different world. It remains to be seen where and how the many creative approaches outlined in the book will be able to take root.
Secondly, the book arrives three years after the federal right to abortion was overturned. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, many states banned abortion or severely restricted access, which has led to widespread efforts to protect women’s bodily autonomy. So it may seem incongruous to raise the issue of male reproductive health, but we argue in the book that this is part of an effort to reframe reproduction and reproductive politics as something that is not only women’s business. We believe this creates the potential to make a much more equitable and reproductively just world for everyone.
