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When the pill came out in 1960, women got to take charge of their own bodies in a new way: They didn't have to rely on men to prevent pregnancy.

Fifty years later, women have all kinds of pills and devices to fit their birth control needs. But while they have the freedom to choose what method works best for them, they are still the ones altering their own bodies for the sake of safer sex.

They are the ones taking daily medications or wearing small hormone-releasing gadgets that doctors demonstrate with scary-looking diagrams.

Where's the prescription for men?

The joke in the field is: The male pill's been five to 10 years away for the last 30 years," said Dr. John Amory, researcher at the University of Washington.

Researchers have been promising a male hormonal contraceptive option for a long time, but there are good reasons why it's so hard to get that technology right. While women make one egg a month, men produce about 1,000 sperm every second, Amory said.

"It proves more difficult to shut down that level of production," he said.

The female pill uses hormones to make the woman's brain think she is pregnant and turns off egg production. But men don't have periods where they turn off sperm production, so it's harder to get them into that state, he said.

One concern is some women don't trust men to use hormonal contraceptives. They say they would have to watch their partners take the pill in order to trust them, Tone said. "The male pill sets up possibility for conflict that the female pill doesn't," she said.

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