- Rats in New York City are to be given birth control in an attempt to humanely get their population under control
- The scheme has failed before, but the city and animal rights activists are hopeful this attempt will be successful
- However, women are outraged that the rodents seem to have better access to reproductive healthcare than them
In bizarre news this week, New York City’s fight against rats has taken a new turn – with the City Council approving a decision to give the furry critters rodent birth control.
The green-light was given to the scheme on Thursday (October 3), and will see special rat-accessible containers be set up around the city, which will contain the contraceptive pellet, ContraPest.
The move is obviously a more humane approach to traditional methods, such as traps, which came under fire after famed Central Park Zoo owl Flaco escaped from its enclosure in 2023 – and was then tragically found dead after consuming rat poison. The bill has been dubbed Flaco’s Law in honor of the bird.
If all goes to plan, the rats will be sterilized, and the population will start to be brought under control.
But while the move is obviously great for the well-being of the rodents – and, as in the tragic case of Flaco, other wildlife – some people were understandably annoyed by the move.
Women across the US pointed out that the rats were getting better access to reproductive healthcare than half the human population.
After the Supreme Court under the Trump administration overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, women’s reproductive rights have become almost non-existent – with abortions under nearly all circumstances now illegal in many states.
While this issue has become a key part of democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s campaign in the upcoming presidential election, women took to social media to express their outrage that the rats were being treated better than them.
One post on Twitter/X read, “No not rats having better access to reproductive healthcare than most women.” The opinion racked up a staggering 317k likes.
Another wrote, “Rats are getting better access to reproductive healthcare than most women that’s actually insane,” while someone else added, “NYC rats getting free healthcare before most Americans btw.”
A third attempt to birth control the rats
The pilot program will run for at least a year, and the bill read, “During such monthly inspections of the pilot program areas, the department shall track the amount of rat contraceptive in each rat contraceptive dispenser.”
Fingers are crossed for the furry population – but this is far from the first time it has been attempted to hoodwink the New York rats into taking birth control.
Back in 1967, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller rolled out a program that dosed rats with estrogen-laced food – which, evidently, didn’t work. A similar move was tried again a decade ago, in a joint program with the MTA and Bryant Park to control the rat population.
But the problem is far from over, with Mayor Adams famously declaring war on rats and crowning Kathleen Corradi the city “rat czar”, giving her a full-time job to address the problem.
Unsurprisingly, animal rights organization PETA has praised the scheme – and said in a statement that the city was a “whisker away” from resolving its rat issue in a humane way.
“Hats off to the council for taking this big step to save lots of precious little lives. PETA pushed the city and its self-described ‘bloodthirsty’ rat czar to prioritize effective control methods like trash mitigation and birth control over cruel, lethal methods such as poison and suffocation,” they said.
