I think it's great news that a contraceptive jab for men could be on the market within the next five years: it'll give men's rights groups something less to whinge about anyway. Just think of it, before long we could actually see an end to all the sob stories about poor dupes being tricked into unwanted fatherhood by evil grasping women, and deadbeat dads could finally become a thing of the past. Not that I think these men have any valid defence for refusing to take responsibility for the children they've spawned at the moment of course. No, it's just that once this little vial of magic's been cleared for widespread distribution, they really will have no excuses left.

The coverage that's been given to this story over the past few days has been strange though. For instance if, like me, you've been following all the hype about the new male "pill", you could be forgiven for thinking that condoms had never been invented. According to the Mail for example, "the research could pave the way for both men and women to share equal responsibility for contraception", as if that's not possible now. Actually men have plenty of choices when it comes to contraception, almost as many as women in fact, and they always have had. The real issue here is that they don't like any of their options, especially not condoms, so all too often they just don't bother. What everyone's really hoping for with this latest breakthrough is that men will finally start taking some responsibility for themselves, and about time too.

Realistically of course, no male version of the pill is going to provide men with the latex-free liberty they appear to crave, it's just going to give them an added layer of protection. After all, no woman in her right mind would rely on a man to take the pill or remember to have a jab regularly, especially if that means he'll have to take periodic trips to see his GP in order to get it. And no magic pill or jab can provide protection against STIs either, so no matter how many assurances men give that they're safe and they've got it all sorted, they're still, literally, going to have to cover it up.

The Mail also reported that "findings from previous surveys have repeatedly suggested one stumbling block will be whether women would sufficiently trust men to make reliable use of hormonal contraception", while the Express had a spokesperson from the Family Planning Association questioning "whether women would be entirely happy leaving birth control to men". But I don't think women's views should determine whether or not the contraceptive eventually gets made. I suspect I'm in the same camp as the men's rights advocates on this one, in that I think giving men a reliable and safe way to control their own reproduction can only be a good thing. And I don't regard this innovation as something that's likely to disempower women either: I'd like to think we've got a lot more going for us than simply our ability to reproduce.

Unfortunately, even if this contraception does get the go-ahead, we're unlikely to see men queuing up for it in droves. They're more liable to see it as a threat to their virility – it's convincing them otherwise that will be the real stumbling block. As the feminist sympathiser Peter Hitchens wrote when a similar issue came up a couple of years ago:

The excitement over a new and supposedly better contraceptive pill is a sign that many women still – quite reasonably – worry about taking this rather frightening medication, which is designed not so much to do them good as to fool their bodies into behaving in an unnatural fashion.

The more I think about it, the more I am amazed that so many people have been ready to do such radical, powerful things to their most complicated and powerful working parts. Do we really know what we are doing?

And I am quite sure that men would not willingly swallow a tablet that did anything comparable to them and to their masculinity. Talk of a male pill will, I suspect, always come to nothing.

At the end of the day anything that can help to ensure that all children are wanted children should be welcomed with open arms, as should anything that helps lift the burden off women when things go wrong. And while the proposed jab may still not provide the sexual freedom that some men are looking for, at least it would give them the reproductive control so many currently claim to lack. An added bonus of course would be an end to the sexist narrative on so-called feckless single mothers, but sadly it'll probably take more than a revolutionary new male contraceptive to kill that one off.