The study, by sex researcher Rachel K. Jones, indicates that "if the male partner withdraws before ejaculation every time a couple has vaginal intercourse, about 4 % of the couples will become pregnant over the course of a year." With an 18% failure rate, the pull-out method comes pretty close to matching up with that of the condom’s 17% failure rate.
The sexting epidemic may be overblown. Hugging is a huge problem in schools. Dating is complicated. David Wain's dating advice. How young is too young to date? What to do when addicted to love, sex and bad boys. Who pays for Plan B? The cure for Vaginosis. Three decades: zero orgasms. A stag night planning firm. When love leads to treason. And is dating a male model all bad?
A new distributor is bringing the female contraceptive known as the sponge back to store shelves. The Today Sponge is expected to appear in thousands of CVS and Longs Drug Stores locations across the nation this week, and Walgreens this summer, reports Natasha Singer for the New York Times. Since appearing in 1983, the sponge has been here-again, gone-again. Manufacturing problems spotted by the FDA in 1994...
"The economy’s so bad we had to lay off one of our kids," comedian Jonathan Katz recently joked. Pretty funny. And absurd. But what about laying off the stork? Now there’s an idea…
A trial is set to test a new hormonal contraceptive for men in 400 couples across the globe (60 in Manchester and 340 in nine international locales). In the study, University of Manchester researchers will initially give male volunteers ages 18 to 45 up to four courses of injections of a combination of two hormones, testosterone undecanoate and norethisterone enantate over six months.
Love Bytes: Four must-click sex, dating, and relationship links.
According to The New York Times, out of work fathers are lining up for vasectomies in the same fervor as they do the unemployment insurance. The Southern California Planned Parenthood has reported a 30% increase in vasectomies, while an Upper East Side doctor in New York City says the financial world's demise has sent herds of fired New Yorkers into his office, upping his usual monthly snip snip quota from six to nine. Whie we're thrilled as ever men are taking control of this whole reproductive problem (it's almost as good as the whispers of male birth control pills) one would venture to guess men are choosing sterilization over condoms. Interesting. And also a point of concern for doctors who feel the urge to tell their eager Fathers No More that vasectomies, while reversable, aren't an operation that should be done in haste. As one frazzled, recently canned 30-year-old told The Times: "I wanted to get this done before the insurance ran out." As if he was talking about a teeth-cleaning or check-up.
Government statistics show back-to-back increases in the birth rate for teens ages 15 to 19 in the U.S. The latest numbers tallied show an increase of 3.4 percent from 2005 to 2006; that's up from an increase of 1.4 percent from 2006 to 2007, reports The Washington Post. These two increases follow a 14-year decline.
Roughly everyone agrees that unwanted (not unplanned) pregnancies are a bad thing. A handful of statistics show that teen and unwanted pregnancy ends up costing the taxpayers a whole lotta money in the long run. Sure, people should be more responsible but that may be a lot to ask. Barack Obama had installed a birth control provision in the economic stimulus plan. The measure became a lightening rod and was ultimately shot down. But was it a really bad idea? Did some fellows on the other side of the aisle talk a bit about sterilization being a good idea some time ago? Let's talk in conversational tones about the idea of maybe helping a few people out with some birth control and maybe require all sexually active college students to use the pill.
A woman was taking the pill and, contrary to anything she'd ever known or expected, get pregnant. With twins. And then it happened again.
There's two types of condoms, you say? Yes! The male condom (the one you likely learned to put around a banana in sex ed class) and the female condom, which.....um......um......wait, you don't know anything about it, either? We like to think of ourselves as pretty knowledgeable about how to practice safe sex, but we were embarrassed to discover how little we knew about the female condom. Even if you grew up with abstinence-only education, you'll know what a Durex or a Trojan looks like. You also know that some men hate to wear 'em. Enter the female condom, method of birth control that basically involves inserting what looks like a larger version of the male condom inside your vagina.
