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The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

time.com

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Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#21

Post by StavrosK »

chollida1 wrote: post #10

From the chart in the article I'm surprised the pill has such a poor performance record of 6-12 pregnancies out of 100 women. When I was in high school, university and in my 20's almost all the women I knew were on the pill and I didn't hear once about an unplanned pregnancy or abortion. Infact all the women I know joked about how they were surprised when they went off the pill how easy it was for them to get pregnan…

I think those percentages are per year. So, out of 100 women, 6-12 will get pregnant within a year. That probably includes failure to actually take the pill, taking it with antibiotics, etc.

A girl I know got pregnant after taking the pill with antibiotics, or stopping it because of antibiotics and forgetting to mention that? Something like that.

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#22

Post by x1798DE »

chollida1 wrote: post #10

From the chart in the article I'm surprised the pill has such a poor performance record of 6-12 pregnancies out of 100 women. When I was in high school, university and in my 20's almost all the women I knew were on the pill and I didn't hear once about an unplanned pregnancy or abortion. Infact all the women I know joked about how they were surprised when they went off the pill how easy it was for them to get pregnan…

One thing is that this is not really 6-12 pregnancies out of 100 (possible pregnancies), it's 6-12 women out of 100 using the pill in a given year will get pregnant in that year, so it's pretty likely that even if the women you know had a similar distribution of use patterns as the average in the studies, there's a decent chance none of them would get pregnant. If you know 40 women and assume a 5% failure rate, there's still a (19/20)^40 = 13% chance that none of them would get pregnant.

Add to that that the people you know might be atypical in their use patterns. The "perfect use" failure rate for the pill is ~0.3%, which I take to mean that most of the pregnancies that occur on the pill are because someone forgot to take pills, that sort of thing.

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#23

Post by cauterized »

The IUD isn't problem-free. A lot of women have painful allergic reactions to the copper ones, and the hormone-based ones a) have hormones, which cause their own problems, and b) have a bad history of getting lodged in the wrong places and having to be surgically removed.

Of course, in Europe and Asia, there is also a much broader range of options to choose from, which helps women select one that has fewer risks for their particular needs. In the US we have problems with regulatory agencies holding up approval of birth control for really dumb political reasons.

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#24

Post by [deleted] »

chollida1 wrote: post #10

From the chart in the article I'm surprised the pill has such a poor performance record of 6-12 pregnancies out of 100 women. When I was in high school, university and in my 20's almost all the women I knew were on the pill and I didn't hear once about an unplanned pregnancy or abortion. Infact all the women I know joked about how they were surprised when they went off the pill how easy it was for them to get pregnan…

[deleted]

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#25

Post by sp332 »

duaneb wrote: post #17
[deleted] wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Do you really need a radio emitter so close to egg DNA?

Non-ionizing radiation doesn't damage DNA, unless you have so much of it that it overheats or something.

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#26

Post by tuxidomasx »

The IUD may be effective for an individual woman because it will be in place for 100% of her sexual partners. The IUD isn't ideal for an individual man because there's no guarantee that 100% of his sexual partners have it installed.

For males, a better form of birth control would be a reversible vasectomy (like RISUG/Vasalgel) because it would be in place for 100% of his sexual partners. I think there is a version of RISUG that will be available in the US soon. If I'm not mistaken, some other countries already have it on the market.

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#27

Post by sp332 »

mountainair wrote: post #5
splat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perfect use failure rate for symptoms-based fertility awareness is (according to Wikipedia anyway) 0.6% per woman per year. (So, 1 woman in 167 per year.) The typical use failure rate is 1.8%, or 1 woman in 56.

Sorry, my question is: How does one use symptoms-based perfectly? My understanding is that a perfect use case happens only a few days each month. So on those few days, you might have very low "failure" rates, but on the other 25 days per month, is a "perfect use" possible?

It's not a few days, it's a week or two. And the "perfect use" on the other days is not to do anything that might get you pregnant!

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#28

Post by Wingman4l7 »

elemeno wrote: post #19
chollida1 wrote: post #10

From the chart in the article I'm surprised the pill has such a poor performance record of 6-12 pregnancies out of 100 women. When I was in high school, university and in my 20's almost all the women I knew were on the pill and I didn't hear once about an unplanned pregnancy or abortion. Infact all the women I know joked about how they were surprised when they went off the pill how easy it was for them to get pregnan…

Part of the performance record might well be due to not everyone taking the pill remembering to always take it. If you miss the odd day, I'd imagine that the chance of accidental pregnancy goes up a fair bit.

Yes, it was always my understanding that the 99%+ efficacy of oral contraceptives were based heavily on taking them in the manner prescribed.

Re: The IUD: The Best Form of Birth Control is the One No One is Using

#29

Post by tomwalker »

noblethrasher wrote: post #16
chollida1 wrote: post #10

From the chart in the article I'm surprised the pill has such a poor performance record of 6-12 pregnancies out of 100 women. When I was in high school, university and in my 20's almost all the women I knew were on the pill and I didn't hear once about an unplanned pregnancy or abortion. Infact all the women I know joked about how they were surprised when they went off the pill how easy it was for them to get pregnan…

That's probably typical use. Perfect use is is %99.9.

Indeed. When used correctly, the user should not ovulate on combined or dual hormone oral contraceptive.

Most studies show that a user can miss quite a few, such as 4 days in a row[1], and not ovulate.

[1] http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/1992/06000/Eff...

http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(04)00...

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