All right, granted, in the old days there wasn’t too much you could do if one broke. But today it’s pretty obvious if one breaks–you’d think that the morning after pill could be obtained pretty easily, making the failure rate pretty low, no?
Not really. The morning after pill isn’t as widely available as one might think, particularly in rural areas. If the only pharmacy is on the other side of the county, and the girl doesn’t have access to a car, her options are limited. For that matter, even if she lives in the town with the only pharmacy in the county, that pharmacy may or may not sell that pill.
My WAG - user error and outright lies (we TOTALLY used a condom, I swear!).
User error is surely a big part of it - putting a condom on after you’ve already started making with the sexins, for example, or improper dismount.
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Er? not using them? Why the coyness?
Improper dismount? I can’t believe there’d be much technique to it, that I’m missing, but could you clue me in?
Typically there are penises in them.
–Cliffy
I’m pretty sure the condoms themselves aren’t getting people pregnant.
If you pull out too late, the penis deflates and the condom falls off inside the vagina. That happened to me once though luckily there was no spillage (moot point, since I was on the pill).
Or if you get out too soon without holding on to the base of the condom, stuff could spill.
How about general laziness?
“Hey babe…the condom broke”
“Shit, really? Well, I guess we have to go to the pharma…hey, look what’s on TV.”
If people are too lazy to pause and put a condom on, why should I think they’d get dressed, drive to the pharmacy, and spend money? Yeah, they could go get the pill. They just don’t.
But the person in this scenario isn’t too lazy to pause and put a condom on.
What is the failure rate for condoms, btw?
It seems to range from about 10 to 18% per wiki. I’ve seen 17% quoted a lot but when googling I also saw 14%.
ETA: That’s the practical use. The perfect use is 3%.
Wow, 3% for perfect use? That’s surprising. I wonder how that statistic was determined? If it wasn’t closely monitored, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if some people were simply lying about how and how often they use condoms.
Ah, the 3% includes condom breaks and such. Well, I guess those people either don’t have enough experience to know that something went wrong or they just decide to chance it. Or, like Oakminster said, they don’t have access to anything else. I wonder if the people in the rigorous controlled trial were allowed to use anything else if they experienced failure.
I would think not, since that would reduce the pregnancy rate, and invalidate the study.
Do you think they watched the couples the entire time they had sex, every time? Or did they just rely on their reports that they did everything correctly? The former I think would be a bit awkward.
I think condom breakage should be counted as user error. If a couples condoms are breaking or slipping, it is because they don’t fit correctly or they need to learn about lubrication. I’d like to know the failure rate for proper use when proper use means use a condom every time and excludes breakage/slippage.
Assuming proper use as defined above, what other kind of failure could there be other than defects in the condom?