The New York City Council approved a contraceptive pilot program last week that will try to curb the city's huge rat population using birth control.
With or without mayor Eric Adams' signature, the bill is set to become law in a matter of 30 days, unless he decides to veto it.
The program entails lacing rat baits with a contraceptive in certain neighborhoods as an alternative to deadly rat poison.
The new rat control bill is called Flaco's Law, named after the city owl who became a media darling but later died from ingesting rat poison.
All this news had online commentators cracking jokes about contraceptives and access.
"New York City is planning on providing birth control for the overpopulation of rats in the city, which means it’s easier to get reproductive rights as a rodent in New York than it is for a woman to get reproductive rights in most of the country," quipped one user on X-formerly-Twitter.
It's an unfortunate reality. Two years after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, several US states have greatly restricted women's right to an abortion. Experts have voiced concerns that the decision could have devastating effects on access to birth control as well. In June, Republicans blocked a bill that would've recognized a legal right to contraception.
Depressing irony aside, rats have always been a problem in New York City, but recent estimates have suggested that the population has surged in recent years from about two million a decade ago to three million.
People have blamed the current rat explosion on decreased sanitation department budgets and an increase in open-air eating in the city streets during the pandemic era — all made worse by the tradition of piling bags of trash for collection on city sidewalks.
To combat the rodent issue, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams has mandated that people start putting their trash out in rat-proof containers.
Adams has been so serious about the rat problem that he appointed a rat czar last year and recently hosted a rat summit to exchange ideas on rodent control.
Meanwhile, women's rights advocates are calling for Congress to reconsider the Right to Contraception Act, which could enshrine a woman's access to birth control in federal law.
More on birth control: Test of Male Birth Control Treatment Produces Promising Results
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