Yet you do it so well! Yes, actually, all that you said. Except that I *am in favor of teaching Fertility Awareness Method, but only so girls (and boys) can learn neat stuff about how the female body works. I am hugely in favor of condom use in all non-monogamous non-lifemate situations - all of them, whether you’re 14 or 40. I see condoms as very valuable at reducing the spread of STD’s - pregnancy prevention is a nice side benefit, but primarily condoms are useful for infection protection. Ideally, of course, one can combine the two - have sex with condoms on days when the girl isn’t fertile. I know 45 seconds each morning to track fertility signs is a lot to ask, but I think it’s possible if we don’t underestimate what teens are capable of. Assume they’re stupid, and they’ll live up to that assumption. If they can run a simple experiment in chemistry class, or they can present a report on the War of 1812, they can take their own temperature, note their cervical fluid and write it down.
As for the rest, I think it’s just like the Drug War. Scare kids and cry wolf and they’ll stop listening. Be straight with them and tell them the truth, and they’re more likely to come to you for information or advice when they actually need it. All it takes is one Google search for contraceptive failure rates, and they’re going to notice that Withdrawal isn’t useless. And then everything true you’ve told them will be questioned or tossed out along with your lie about that method, and you’ve lost all credibility. Teens (hell, people) aren’t known for their forgiveness once you’ve lied to them.
**not *Rhythm - Rhythm is based on the myth that every woman ovulates on Day 14 of her cycle. FAM teaches scientific methods of determining each woman’s actual fertility signs, and avoiding intercourse or using other methods on specific days based on those signs. It’s got a 2% failure rate, putting it up there with The Pill, as opposed to Rhythm’s 25% failure rate. There’s often confusion, as FAM statistics are frequently lumped with Rhythm in charts, making FAM look bad. For more information about FAM, check out that book I linked earlier in the thread.
Bilateral *orchiectomy *isn’t done for contraception in this country - there are too many health risks to losing both testicles for it to be used for such a purpose. (And surgically removing orchids just seems silly! )
Nothing, not even abstinence from penetration, is 100% effective. Semen on a fingertip near the genitals can theoretically swim up fertile quality cervical fluid and make it into the fallopian tubes.
Total abstinence from all sexual activity might be closer to 100%, but I’m suspect of that belief in the Christian religious circles. They have quite a famous virginal mother, y’know. Either way, I think expecting total abstinence of any human being, especially a young one with undeveloped impulse control, is far less realistic then thinking an intelligent woman can’t learn to track her cycles merely because she’s young. It ain’t rocket science.
I know you mean well and all, and I agree that understanding their bodies would be good for teenagers. However, the mere fact that so many are able to mess up taking the pill, an activity that takes considerably less awareness than your method, would indicate to me that it is a lot to ask.
WhyNot. Again, your heart is in the right spot, BUT…
Your method might work in Mayfield, if everyone lived next door to Ward and June Cleaver. But expecting a young lady to stop necking, run to the restroom, take her temperature, then looking for the other signs when she is “wet” for other reasons, is not realistic.
Consider that there are **failure ** rates with all the methods you quoted.
Document a failure rate for abstinence please. (forget that Mary lady, too much controversy)
Can you document a success rate for abstinence education? My understanding is that they’ve been an abysmal failure, “purity balls” notwithstanding. I don’t care if abstinence works to prevent pregnancy, I care about whether or not you can get teenagers to remain abstinent.
(And, of course, that’s not at all the way FAM works. There is absolutely no need to interrupt the act for any reason, unless you know you’re fertile and you stop to put on a condom. Which you should be doing anyway.)
Like anything in school, it’s how you use what you learn, not simply what you learn.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that abstaining from sex is 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy. Unless the guy is cockeyed, I’m pretty sure it works.
(bolding mine)
I can’t believe abstance has the highest failure rate.
This is a black and white issue.
Abstance is simple. Keep the zipper up.
The good - abstance prevents unwanted pregnancy.
The bad – it isn’t popular
Typical abstance, as you describe it isn’t abstance, it’s having sex.
Right, and taking the pill and then throwing up, or taking antibiotics, or missing a dose, isn’t Being on The Pill, it’s not being on The Pill. Not using the condom, or putting it on inside out, isn’t Using a Condom properly. Charting your fertility signs and deciding to have sex on a fertile day anyway isn’t Using FAM. Yet all of those are factored into the statistics on their typical use failure rates. “Typical abstinence” rates (if anyone has them) are just as flawed as Typical Pill rates.
No method works if you can’t get people to use it. Patient compliance is as much a factor in effectiveness as the theory of the thing.
You want “typical abstinence”? I point you to one of my former employees, a good devout born-again Christian girl from a good family who promised her Daddy she’d remain a virgin until marriage. Then she met a guy, fell in luuuurve, and discovered that penises are interesting. She decided, to keep her word to Daddy, that she’d remain a virgin. She’d just have anal sex instead. In her mind, this was absolutely remaining abstinent - she saw no conflict here. (This was shortly before Bill Clinton helped a nation to redefine “sex”.) She got pregnant, through anal intercourse alone. Her father, of course, flipped out, and dragged her to his own doctor, who confirmed that her hymen was still intact and she was still “a virgin.” The doctor’s theory was that semen dripped out of her anus onto her panties and swam up the cervical fluid through the uterus and into the fallopian tube. Voila - virgin pregnancy.
A Typical Kid will promise abstinence, because it’s just too damn humiliating to tell your father and your pastor that you like dick. A Typical Kid, in Typical Kid fashion, will then go on to do what kids Typically do, which is fuck like Typical Bunnies. That’s Typical Abstinence.
Just wanted to add that my ex-wife’s second pregnancy (about 9 weeks after the birth of our first child) was a result of FA. There are all sorts of factors that can cause small fluctuations in Basal body temperature. It’s really not something you want teenagers using.
I didn’t mean it had the highest failure rate, just a lot igher than nothing.
Of course it’s having sex, but all those “typical” statistics for various types of birth control include basically people not doing what they claim they are doing: saying your method is abstinence and then having sex (or “cheating at it”) happens quite a bit amoung high school students, IME. It seems to be what happened in the original thread. So any statistics on the “typical” use of a type of birth control need to inclue people like that.
Abstinence. Perfect use–O% failure rate. I have no argument with you there. The bottom line is, though, very few people–even those who make religious vows of abstinence–will use abstinence perfectly. They’ll “slip up just this once,” or just this twice, or only on Tuesdays.
As for FAM, I read WhyNot’s posts several times, and nowhere did she say, “Use only this method!” In fact, she mentions it in conjunction with condom use at least once.
You’re not supposed to use FAM 9 weeks after giving birth, it can’t be used while breastfeeding (if she was) and certainly not with a newborn in the house messing with your sleep schedule. It’s in the rules. So if **Morgenstern **gets to discard all the folks not following his rules of Abstinence, I get to discard this one.
(Not that I’m not sorry for what happened to you guys. But it’s clearly stated in the theory that it won’t work postpartum for several months.)
I get the feeling **Morgenstern **doesn’t think that condoms make my arguments any more palatable. He (she?) is an Abstinence Only person it seems. But yes, you’re right, I think all people of all ages should be using condoms to minimize disease spread AND the contraceptive properties are a nice benefit. I use condoms myself, every time. I don’t, however, *rely *on them for birth control, as they have a higher failure rate than I am comfortable with. I use FAM to prevent babies and condoms to prevent disease. Even if teenaged girls are given The Pill, the patch or an IUD, they should still be using condoms to prevent disease. Shit, with adultery rates the way they are, I’m astounded that even married “monogamous” couples don’t use condoms every time they aren’t trying to conceive.
But that example I just gave is an excellent one of why I think FAM should be taught, even if it’s not the method people decide to use for birth control: the girl had no idea what cervical fluid was. She had no clue that sperm use it to swim in, or that there were a few days a month when her body was very accommodating to sperm even just outside her body. She thought she had yeast infections every month when she saw this periodic “discharge”. So on top of her fertility ignorance, she was medicating herself with unneeded Monistat! Every month! :smack: Had she been given that information, she wouldn’t have been able to play the ignorant card. I don’t care what people do, I really don’t. But I do think they should be informed when they do it. It’s the only way to really hold people responsible for their actions.
I agree with your first sentence, but my (admittedly kind of fuzzy) point there was that Morgenstern acted as if you had outlined FAM as the perfect birth control method for everyone, which you did not.
Yes! It’s not just so people can have sex with a lower risk of unwanted consequences. It’s for health, so you will know how your body is supposed to function and when something is actually wrong.
I have to agree that there are many problems with ALL birth control methods.
The problem is spontaneity of most sex acts with teenagers. By the time they realize they are about to screw it’s too late to take your temperature, buy a rubber, take a pill, plan on withdrawing, etc.
Abstinence isn’t popular. It isn’t fun, nor is it anything I practiced as a youth. But, if properly practiced, it does prevent spontaneous sex. It keeps two teenagers from turning their lives upside down for a few minutes of pleasure. —I know…in a perfect world…—
My point is really this. Any advice given to ‘Lil Squirt should be simple, straight and direct. He hasn’t impressed me as being capable of mastering anything more complicated than abstinence.
He hasn’t mastered that either, and despite his fright, I am not naive enough to think that he would necessarily be inclined to do so. My feeling is that it is better to be prepared for the possibility of sex to occur (have usable condoms with you, be using hormonal birth control already, something like that) than to just try not to have sex. Abstinence is great when you do it right; I’m not knocking it at all.
Guess which of my cousins got his girlfriend pregnant, though? (rather, guess which one didn’t–much shorter list–in fact, it only includes the one who’s gay) The condom-using agnostic, or the born-again Christian who swore up and down he would never have sex outside of marriage?
Nowhere was I advocating scare tactics and lying ala the War on Drugs. NOWHERE. I never advocate lying to kids about sex, drugs, or anything else. The truth is the best weapon here. Torturing statistics to get them to say what you want is what I’m objecting to because of the possible interpretations of the data that could get a kid in trouble. When I have a kid and am teaching him about birth control, I will explain all the reasons why withdrawal is a BAD idea and should only be used in extremis, not tell him it’s totally useless, which is a lie. It’s better than nothing. And that’s about all it is.
Withdrawal is not useless. Teaching kids that withdrawal can be an effective method of birth control is worse than useless; it’s dangerous, because it doesn’t take into account the audience you’re dealing with. Let’s look at some truly relevant statistics about failure rates for contraceptives as used by teens. Teens really cannot use withdrawal effectively, according to my cite here:after 2 years using the withdrawal method, teens have a **43% chance ** of getting pregnant. This is a far greater failure rate than the stats cited upthread, which is for ALL people using it, not just teens. Their failure rate for the calendar/rhythm method is 43%, and failure rate for condom use is 27%, also much higher. Bottom line: teens suck at using birth control effectively. They should probably use more than one method, like FAM and condoms, or the Pill and condoms. Ideally, they should practice abstinence, but better to educate them and scare the crap out of them with the truth just in case.
It is a rather complicated method. Sure, teach kids about the woman’s cycle in great detail, but again, point out all the complexities and cite TYPICAL use FOR TEENS statistics. Then encourage the use of a barrier method along with this for safety from disease and pregnancy.
Please, I wish you would not persist in this idea that teaching teens about sex is the same as teaching adults about it, nor that these statistics on effectiveness apply to teens the same as they do to adults using these methods. Their judgement is much worse, their willingness to take risks and act impulsively much higher. Educating them about responsible sex has to be tailored to their needs and capabilities, not your political/social agenda.
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