Of course, a government might require only implantation of the contraceptive capsule, leaving its removal to the individual's discretion but requiring reimplantation after childbirth. Since having a child would require positive action (removal of the capsule). many more births would be prevented than in the reverse situation. Certainly unwanted births and the problem of abortion would both be entirely avoided The disadvantages (apart from the obvious moral objections) include the questionable desirability of keeping the entire female population on a continuous steroid dosage with the contingent health risks, and the logistics of implanting capsules in 50 percent of the population between the ages of 15 and 50.
Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitively among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.
Physiologist Melvin Ketchel, of the Tufts University School of Medicine, suggested that a sterilant could be developed that would have a very specific action-for example, preventing implantation of the fertilized ovum. He proposed that it be used [0 reduce fertility le~ls by adjustable amounts, anywhere from 5 to 75 percent, rather than to sterilize the whole population completely. In this way. fertility could be adjusted from time to time to meet a society's changing needs, and there would be no need to provide an antidote. . ..
