POLL: Premarital Sex

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I personally know someone who got pregnant while on the pill and another who got pregnant while on Depo-Provera. I know two other women who conceived unexpected (baby number 3 very shortly after baby #2's birth) but I have no idea what, if any, contraception they were using.

Don't forget that condoms can break, or leak if improperly used, or be degraded by using an incompatible lubricant. Effectiveness statistics will likely reflect all of those cases and many others, regardless if they're the 'fault' of the condom or the users. Statistics don't care about such things, just the ehnd result.

And then there was was Velcro's old college acquaintance, the guy who had a job at the diaphragm factory and thought it was great fun to poke them with pins when no one was watching.

 

I've heard condoms are AT MOST 75% effective for teenagers (they're just too impatient). Not good odds.

Oh yeah. They "rhythm" method doesn't work. My daughter is proof of that.

 

Oh man, that is just wrong. Not cool at all.

I guess part of the problem with my reasoning is sample size. How many people do I know well enough to know if and what type of birth control they are using? Not that many. Certainly not in the number of thousands that the makers of these products have access to.

Do you think these companies have complaint departments? I can really think of only one reason you'd call up a complaint department at a company than manufactures contraceptives. Do all the phone calls/e-mails/letters go something along the lines of "You bastards! I used your product properly and I still got my girlfriend knocked up!"

But I digress. My point was more along the lines of: what do the actual failure rates on the package represent? The chance of getting pregnant assuming the woman is capable of conceiving, or the overall chance of getting pregnant at all? There's only a period of a few days per month that a woman can conceive at all - regardless of whether or not she is using birth control. So on the surface it seems like your base chance of getting pregnant - even if you use no protection at all - can't be much more than like 20%.

And I guess a final question is how exactly do birth control methods fail if used properly? Condoms can break. Diaphragms can have holes in them. But with things like Depo and the pill, provided you take them when you are supposed to, what exactly fails?

EDIT: Now I know of one person who has also had depo, the pill, and the rhythm method fail in addition to NFP.

 

WHO statistics on the condom are 3% failure at twelve months if used correctly, 10-14% otherwise.
HOWEVER they don't actually say how often people have had sex within this 12 month period. If everyone in the study has been having sex about 100 times a year (I believe slightly below western averages, but an easy number to deal with) the actual failure rate of condoms could be as low as 0.3% if used correctly as it only takes one of those to fail.

Interestingly, the WHO figures show condoms are actually better at preventing HIV than pregnancy.

A friends brother's girlfriend got pregnant whilst on the pill, I believe becuase she was also taking some other medication for illness (But something fairly minor.)

 

Even if it was minor, it could interfere with how the pill works. My wife and I always refrain from sex even if she is taking some basic antibiotic.

And if that figure is over a year, and most people have sex 100 times in a year then it's really not saying that 3 out of 100 condoms don't work. As you said, the actual percentage of success is much better than that.

 

Anyone who can successfully apply the rhythmn or NFP methods deserves a medal.

Anyway, the risk of getting pregnant whilst using contraception is VERY low, much lower than the risk of being injured in a car crash or falling down the stairs at home, but I don't hear anyone advocating a ban on cars and stairs, even though the consequences (i.e. dying) or arguably worse than that of pregnancy (i.e. a child to carry on your legacy in the world)

 

Where to start.
1.)A close friend of mine was personally concieved while his parents were on 3 different forms of birth control at the same time (and no methods or techniques among them).
2.)The odds of dying in a fall down the stairs (or even being seriously injured) are incredibly low. The odds of dying in a car accident are much higher, but we need to be transported to and from work somehow. The odds of getting pregnant while on birth control may be low, but sex is entirely optional to begin with.
3.)Pregnancy is only one of the many negative consequences of premarital sex that have been discussed on this board. Please don't argue as if it were the only one.

 

But the man's semen can live inside a woman for about 72 hours, expanding that window considerably.

One could argue that it is possible to work from home, or to find a way to transport oneself less in order to decrease the risk of a car crash. Sure, working locally may make less money and as a resutlt one would miss out on some of the pleasures of life, but sex too is a pleasure in life would be missed out on if one abstains soely for the purpose of preventing conception.

However, pregnancy is a major consequence, and it is a consequence that is applicable to those who do not have religious bias against premarital sex.

 

For at least one of the readers of this board (me) none of the "negative consequences of premarital sex" actually hold any water. In fact, I don't even see what the big deal with a one night stand is, as long as both parties understand what they are getting into. I haven't seen a single pitfall of pre-marital sex brought up that couldn't also be classified as a pitfall to marriage.

 

Excellent point Drew. While it can be certainly argued that people who are married are probably more likely to accept a pregnancy, it's not like the only people who are getting abortions are unmarried women. Sure, I imagine that's a good chunk of them, but an unwanted pregnancy could just as easily occur within a marriage as outside of one.

 

Well, for sleeping around, how about the psychological and emotional effects? How about the drastically increased odds of STD's? Remember, if both you and your wife (or husband) were virgins, and you've both been faithful, it's pretty hard to contract STD's. What about all the studies that have shown it is better for a child to be raised in a two parent household than a one parent one? That may not have been mentioned before, but it certainly applies. If you have sex and leave the girl, and she gets pregnant and doesn't have an abortion (for whatever reason), she's now a single mother.

 

So, are you advocating abortion in the case? If the mother is going to be single, and have a real hard time raising the child, and the child isn't going to be well off anyway being raised by a single parent, is abortion justified in this case? Or am I just missing your point?

 

I never said that dead was better than being raised in a single parent house. That goes right along with the logic that says we should kill all the poor people so they won't have to live in poverty anymore. Yes, Gnarff, I think you missed the point.

 

If there's really no chance of improving their situation...well, let's just say I wouldn't want to live like that. But the difference is that "the poor people" actually have the capacity to think and decide for themselves whether or not they want to live, right from the moment that they become poor (and a sharp piece of metal isn't that hard to find). A child would have to suffer through a couple decades before it could make the same rational choice, condemning them to something they didn't agree to.

Aldeth, not Gnarff.

 

The fault of a child having to be raised by a single mother is not the fault of premarital sex, its the fault of the father not taking responsibility for his actions. If one is to engage in premarital sex, one needs to accept the possible consequences, and take responsibility for them.

 

The mumbo-jumbo about contraceptives failing is utter bollocks. They don't fail because they're faulty, they fail because the people using them screwed up. I've had a condom break on me ONCE and I knew it broke and I know why it broke (lucky for me I hadn't ejaculated yet, yet she took the 'morning after pill' just to be sure). I never made the same mistake again and despite my gross number of rampant pre-marital sexual encounters I've yet to father a child. I actually got concerned at some stage since statistically speaking with condoms supposedly failing 3% of the time I should have about... maybe 9 children by now. So I had my semen checked and I'm 100% fertile.

Maybe it's just my case. Maybe I'm just lucky? Or maybe the people who had contraceptives 'fail' on them actually failed the contraceptives by not applying them properly.

 

Good point. I agree with that.

An STD is just another disease. If you're so worried about catching diseases, you'd better stay away from all people and wear a gas mask all day and only eat organic food and exercise for 30 minutes a day and get plenty of fibre and eat five or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day and do stress relieving meditation twice a day and all the other things that I bet you don't do as religiously as you avoid sex.

 

If they aren't ready for that resopnsibility, then they have no business having sex. When I was in college (despite no luck getting to have sex) I was willing to take that responsibility (but would have failed miserably looking back...)

 

Sorry Gnarff, I don't know why I thought it was you.

@Ab:
You must be lucky, because all contraceptives have a chance of failure, even when properly used.

@HB:
STD's tend to be worse than the common cold. Many of them cannot be cured, or at least not once they make themselves apparent, and more than a few can have serious concequenes; particularly AIDS and Syphilis if untreated.

@Deepfae & Gnarff:
The fact is that a woman having pre-marital sex cannot (unless I missed something in the law, please correct me if I did) legally expect or compell the father to stick around if she gets pregnant. She takes that risk on herself when she decides to have pre-marital sex. Is it right? Maybe not, but then Gnarff is right that they shouldn't be in that situation to begin with. And Gnarff, just because they shouldn't doesn't mean they won't, as I'm sure you realize.

 

Well, she can't legally expect or compel the father to stick around even if they are married. She can legally expect and compel the father to pay for child support though, regardless of whether he is around or not.