AFY_EmilyB
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A quick hit from the National Review today: Maggie Gallagher on contraceptive "failure" rates:
What are the odds that that a young woman will get pregnant during her first year on the Pill?
The answer is: At typical rates of contraceptive failure, nine out of 100 of these young women will get pregnant. (Actually, that's the average for all Pill users; young users probably have higher failure rates.) Among condom users, 17 young women will get pregnant for every 100 who rely on this method (IUD's and implants are the most successful methods in "typical use"). That's just the risk in the first year.
Newsflash: Sex makes babies.
Um....OK, thanks for that newsflash, I guess, but Gallagher neglects to share the extremely pertinent information that for those who use no method, 80 out of 100 will experience pregnancy in the first year. That's 9 or 17 vs. EIGHTY. Let's get that on the table.
Doubling up contraception, by using condoms as well as the pill, Depo, etc, increases your protection against pregnancy even more. And let's not let her gloss over the implant and the IUD either - only one couple in a hundred experiences pregnancy while using these methods. Doesn't that kind of shoot down the whole "contraception is a failure" theory?
But secondly, this is typical social conservative emphasis on the failure of contraceptives. I have said it before and I will say it again: They disguise their anti-contraception agenda as a pro-abstinence agenda. This is the messaging they want for young people, too: they emphasize contraceptive failure rates to bolster abstinence, not because they want the best for young people's health, but because they believe contraception is immoral.
Newsflash: Contraception prevents babies. So if you're sexually active but don't want a baby you don't have to have one. It's not about the end of culture and separating the holy act of sex from the miracle of blah blah blah. It's about making choices and planning your life the way you want it to be. Cutting the odds of unintended pregnancy from 80/100 to 9 out of 100 or less doesn't seem so bad to me.
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