As funny as this anecdote is, the real issue was that it caused a couple of cases of permanent sterility so the scientists were forced to abandon the study.

The whole thing is annoying because I've now seen the whole "lol boys can't handle what girls put themselves through on the pill" from print news, reddit, buzzfeed, my girlfriend's gynecologist, and now hacker news. It would be great if male contraception existed, and lots of men would be fine with the side effects, but permanent sterilization is a whole different ballgame as far as risk factors go.

The difference was the the men in the study were experiencing those side effects at an order of magnitude higher than men do, plus there was huge increase in suicides.

The last time I saw this discussed, there was discussion about whether the drugs caused permanent sterilization for a subset of men, and how large the subset might be.

It's also worth noting that the effects of current birth control on women are bad enough that a decent fraction of women can't use one or more methods. There's still substantial room for improvement on the side effects that women face.