For the past few weeks I’ve been telling people a story that ends with “and now her life is RUINED, thanks to …!” (I redacted names — it just seemed like a cautionary tale people had to hear.) As often happens with dramatic cautionary tales, I just found out the facts are wrong.
A lady I know (not a client) told me she’d been taking her 17-year-old daughter to get Depo-Provera birth control shots. Her daughter got pregnant anyway. And since she was on this supposedly foolproof method of birth control, she didn’t notice the early warning signs of pregnancy. They didn’t figure it out until she was 16 weeks pregnant. At that point, they considered it too late to terminate the pregnancy (you still can, but it’s a more complicated procedure). So now this high school student is stuck having a baby with a 21-year-old unemployed guy who lives with his parents.
You can see how this would agitate me. Not only did the shot not work, it caused detrimental reliance! And this was a high school student! I’m usually suspicious of claims that a pregnancy happened despite best efforts at birth control, but this one seemed credible. And it’s not like I could check it out on Snopes before passing it on.
Turns out the girl lied to her mom. Although her mom often took her for the shots, this time she’d said she’d go herself — and didn’t. She finally broke down and told her mother. She was trying to get pregnant.
Here’s the kicker: It was the guy’s idea. This is a planned pregnancy. A very lame plan, but still.
Unfortunately, I’ve been unwittingly slandering poor Depo-Provera for the past few weeks any time I could work it into a conversation. See, stories like this are why I suspect birth control in general is a lot more reliable than either anecdotal evidence or the figures indicate. I think it’s pretty common for people who have an unplanned (or poorly planned) pregnancy to claim they were using birth control to save face.
I particularly think condoms are a lot more reliable than they get credit for. In high school sex ed, they made it sound like no birth control method was substantially reliable except abstinence (except the Pill which had horrible, horrible side effects), but that using a condom was practically like using nothing. I’ve seen figures as low as 70 percent reliability. And I’ve known women who got pregnant who claimed they were using condoms — but then when I asked a few more questions, it turned out they weren’t always using them.
Another near-myth: broken condoms. I’ve used condoms all my life and have never had one break on me. I have no friends who have ever reported a single instance of condom breakage. The only real, live person I’ve ever spoken with who claimed that “the condom broke” was someone whose story (one that concerned the “inadvertent” transmission of a venereal disease) had already built up a considerable credibility deficit with me anyway.
I won’t say that it’s impossible for a condom to break or otherwise fail when used properly. And it’s easy to use a condom properly. So your story about Depo-Provera not really failing because its use was subverted suggests to me that those people who report condom failure should immediately be suspected of wanting the condom to have failed before having used it.
Comment by Transplanted Lawyer — April 30, 2010 @ 12:42 pm
Another near-myth: broken condoms. I’ve used condoms all my life and have never had one break on me.
Errr, not a myth. It happened to me twice. Since it is one of those things that is rare and it happened to me twice when I was young and inexperienced, I am quite willing to believe that I caused it somehow. I’m guessing that I was doing something when opening them that was creating a tear? I really don’t know. I definitely did not want the condom to fail, though. It was some seriously scary stuff. Not knowing that the condom had burst, I didn’t even withdraw.
That being said, I would be willing to bet that most of the time when people do report physical condom failures to explain a pregnancy, they’re probably not being truthful. Not only is it something pretty rare, but the chances of it happening and a pregnancy occuring on that single, rare attempt, is improbable.
Comment by trumwill — April 30, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
Although her mom often took her for the shots, this time she’d said she’d go herself — and didn’t. She finally broke down and told her mother. She was trying to get pregnant.
Ah-ha! Yet another woman trying to use pregnancy to manipulate a man and saddle him with ridiculous child suppo…
Here’s the kicker: It was the guy’s idea.
Oh. Uh-huh. Sure. This girl has proven to be soooo reliable a narrator thus far.
Yeah, I’m joking. It’s funny how we throw our own ideas into a story. Cause I was thinking a lighter variation of the first paragraph before reading the next part.
Comment by trumwill — April 30, 2010 @ 1:05 pm
On the subject as a whole, that’s why I like the charts and tables that compare “perfect use” with “typical use”. With the exception of the long-term stuff like Depo and IUDs, perfect use of just about any type of contraceptive (including withdrawal, I should point out) is more effective than the typical use of any other kind of contraceptive (except, apparently, a particular type of sponge).
Clancy recommends that kids always use two kinds of contraception. That’s one of the reasons that I am hopeful that they will come up with a male pill.
Comment by trumwill — April 30, 2010 @ 1:10 pm
“I’ve used condoms all my life and have never had one break on me.”
Me neither.
I get mad when I think of the inaccuracy promoted about birth control, particularly condoms, by some factions. When I was younger, I was paranoid possibly to the point of psychosis about getting pregnant, even with birth control, partly because I thought it was a lot more likely than it really is.
I know one guy (besides Will) who claimed breakage. He was trying to get me to have sex with him (no sex was had). He was advocating against condoms and in favor of the Pill, and claimed he had such a mammoth penis that the condom often broke.
Comment by stone — April 30, 2010 @ 1:15 pm
“Here’s the kicker: It was the guy’s idea.
Oh. Uh-huh. Sure. This girl has proven to be soooo reliable a narrator thus far.”
The guy admitted it to the mom (according to the mom).
No plans for marriage, or even a job. But he thought it would be just great to knock his underaged girlfriend up.
I don’t think that’s uncommon behavior for certain types of guys. The MRAs underestimate the desire of many flaky men to get a woman pregnant, even if they don’t have much of a plan beyond that or regret it once they realize what’s involved.
Comment by stone — April 30, 2010 @ 1:19 pm
When I was younger, I was paranoid possibly to the point of psychosis about getting pregnant, even with birth control, partly because I thought it was a lot more likely than it really is.
Yeah. People should know the dangers of each method of birth control, but they should also know that the most common cause of birth control failure is the person using it.
I know one guy (besides Will) who claimed breakage.
I suspect that most of the time you (collective second person) hear about it, the person already lacks credibility because they’re already in the position of defending themselves. I doubt I’m the only one. Outside of blogland, though, it’s not exactly something I go out and tell people. I don’t have a kid I have to justify. And it’s as likely as not that I screwed up in my handling of it.
There’s good reason to be skeptical of someone that says “the condom broke” to explain an unintended pregnancy. A guy that uses it to make the case that his penis is sooo large? If anything, condom failures are probably most likely to occur because the guy has a penis small enough (at least in its retracted state) that it falls off when he’s done and it retracts.
Comment by trumwill — April 30, 2010 @ 1:40 pm
Oh, and I would clarify one thing about breakages: the first time I didn’t know it had happened until it was too late. The second time I did (because of the all-too-familiar uptick in sensitivity). I was still scared of pregnancy because of the scare-job they run on pre-ejaculate, but my fear in that case was far less grounded.
Comment by trumwill — April 30, 2010 @ 1:45 pm
Here’s the kicker: It was the guy’s idea.
Oh. Uh-huh. Sure. This girl has proven to be soooo reliable a narrator thus far.
I wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of men including myself can find arousal in the idea of getting a girl pregnant, but some of us are smart enough to conclude that it’s something that’s best left to the right circumstances (i.e married & employed). Other men either have no care for what happens afterward, or presume that varying welfare programmes will ensure that everything will work out.
Another near-myth: broken condoms.
Recently, Athena was sleeping with somebody who had the condom break during penetration, and didn’t tell her about it until he released his semen inside of her. She noted that it felt unusually pleasurable, but she didn’t stop since she still felt the rubber. Mind you, like a responsible girl, once she felt the semen inside of her, she ran off to secure the so-called “morning after” pill, and luckily for her, she didn’t become pregnant. So, while I suspect condoms are capable of breaking, it’s more likely that it’s noticed in the middle of sex, and either somebody stops before orgasm or uses emergency contraception. I suspect that some of the broken condom references may refer to times when a condom was used during the first round of, but forgotten about during a second round, or when alcohol or drugs clouded the judgment of the user.
Comment by David Alexander — April 30, 2010 @ 3:18 pm
I couldn’t help notice that in this post, you insist that the only problem with birth control is the failure to use it, yet in the following post, you dismiss precisely this defense of exercise and dieting for weight loss.
Comment by ? — April 30, 2010 @ 7:24 pm
Two posts written by different people, Phi. I’ll bite, though, because I do come down harder on those that fail with birth control than those that fail with diet and exercise. And it’s a couple of interesting subjects.
I said above that I like the charts that post both perfect and typical usage. Both numbers are relevant. If there were a form of contraception that had a “typical” failure rate of 90% even if the “perfect” failure rate was only 0%, I would consider that form of birth control to be near useless. With the exception of gastric bypass, the “typical” failure rate of massive weight-loss over a sustained period of time is somewhere north of 80% (I have yet to see results better than 90% failure, actually). That tells me that we’re asking them to do something that most people can’t.
There is no form of birth control with failure rates in “typical” use that high. The worst is spermicide, which still has a failure rate of 29% (preventing over 65% of pregnancies that would occur with no protection whatsoever, 15% wouldn’t get pregnant in any event). Spermicide also has a relatively poor “perfect” use failure rate, too, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
In that sense, the better counterexample might be Withdrawal and the Cycle method. They fail at 27% and 25% respectively in typical use. In perfect use, they can fail as little as 8% and 3%. Both sets of numbers are important. If you have complete control over ejaculation or if you are disciplined enough to use the cycle method, the 8% and 3% are more significant numbers. If you’re not sure, the 27% and 25% numbers are more significant.
If you are the type of person that can exercise a whole lot without eating more, then by all means you should do so! Most people (women in particular), it would seem, aren’t. That’s pretty significant.
The studies in the article I mentioned was more limited in scope than all this. It basically said that exercise is a good way to keep from gaining weight, but not necessarily a good way to lose it because people end up consuming more calories. I’m thinking more abstractly when I talk about weight loss and I’m talking about losing a significant number of pounds over a significant period of time. Except gastric bypass*, we haven’t found something that most people can successfully do the same way that most people can successfully avoid pregnancy through the use of birth control. Further, unlike birth control where if you can’t pull off one pretty reliable method that most people can pull off, you have other even more reliable options. Weight loss methods don’t range from “pretty reliable” to “extremely reliable” in typical performance.
* - I’m inclined to come down harder on those that go through gastric bypass and then gain all the weight back. It seems that is something that can be done. So the people that can’t do it are more likely to not be taking takable steps to do so.
Comment by trumwill — April 30, 2010 @ 9:15 pm
So, while I suspect condoms are capable of breaking, it’s more likely that it’s noticed in the middle of sex, and either somebody stops before orgasm or uses emergency contraception.
As I said before, the first time when I didn’t realize what was happening other than a rush of sensation, I didn’t stop. But when I knew what had happened the second time around, I stopped cold. I suspect that more guys than not would have a better idea of what was happening, particularly if they’ve had a fair amount of sex with and without a condom. That was relatively early in my sexual life.
I suspect that some of the broken condom references may refer to times when a condom was used during the first round of, but forgotten about during a second round,
I think that’s one of the reasons behind the failure rates of Withdrawal, too. Apparently the real danger with it is double-dipping. That’s something I really wish I had known.
Comment by trumwill — April 30, 2010 @ 9:21 pm
“That being said, I would be willing to bet that most of the time when people do report physical condom failures to explain a pregnancy, they’re probably not being truthful.”
Heh. Reminds me of a time I blamed “car trouble” for being late to an Army Reserve drill. Someone else quipped, “Your ‘car trouble’ was that you got in it too late”.
Comment by DaveinHackensack — May 1, 2010 @ 12:22 am
Is it me, or is there a little TMI in this thread? Yuck.
Comment by Kirk — May 2, 2010 @ 9:16 am
“Is it me, or is there a little TMI in this thread? Yuck.”
Yes, Kirk, we probably didn’t need to hear that disgusting business about Dave’s car. But then again, this is what Internet anonymity is good for.
Comment by Sheila Tone — May 2, 2010 @ 10:56 am
Sheila makes a funny. Nice one, young lady.
Comment by DaveinHackensack — May 2, 2010 @ 10:15 pm
Trumwill — I did say “suspected,” not “convicted.”
If you were an inexperienced condom user it’s entirely possible you made a mistake of some kind.
Comment by Transplanted Lawyer — May 3, 2010 @ 3:20 pm
True, and you said “near-myth” and not actual myth.
Comment by trumwill — May 3, 2010 @ 10:34 pm