Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site tove.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!tove!liz From: liz@tove.UUCP (Liz Allen) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: Who's Life Anyway? Message-ID: <270@tove.UUCP> Date: Thu, 11-Jul-85 12:55:09 EDT Article-I.D.: tove.270 Posted: Thu Jul 11 12:55:09 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 03:33:18 EDT References: <556@bgsuvax.UUCP> <283@vaxwaller.UUCP> Reply-To: liz@tove.UUCP (Liz Allen) Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD Lines: 40 Summary: effectiveness of the Pill In article <481@ihu1e.UUCP> mjv@ihu1e.UUCP (Vlach) writes: >> A 99.9% reliability for the pill means that if a woman is >> using the pill and is sexually active, she has a .1% chance of getting >> pregnant in a given year, NOT each time she has sex. > >I hate to see this 99.9% rate flying around in so many messages. The pill >is ~95-97% effective when used EXACTLY as directed. When I worked at the Pregnancy Aid Center in College Park, the information we had was that the pill was >99% effective when used as directed. And, barring house fires, etc, it is not that difficult to use. >Just want you all to realize that pregnancy prevention is not as effective >as one might think. Also, I would suspect most abortions go to young women >who have never used birth control and don't know where to get it without >their parents finding out. Providing birth control to a teen mainly communicates that it is ok to have sex. Too many teens believe that "it can't happen to me" and don't bother using it. Remember, too, that teens don't plan ahead very well. Many of them don't plan to have sex yet and, when faced with a situation when they need to make a choice, it makes it all that much more difficult to say no when so many people are telling them that it's ok. How many of those that say yes are going to have planned to use birth control? I think we need to teach teens old fashioned things like the self-control and discipline needed to be able to make a decision and stay with it. There was a meeting in Washington, DC a few months ago of a task force that the mayor appointed to look into the problem of teen pregnancy. The high school students kept getting up and saying "tell us not to do it", but the Task Force didn't hear that. They just wanted to say "But if you do, be sure to use birth control". (I could get off, at this point, on some of the other amazing things happening in the public schools these days, but I will hold off...) -- Liz Allen U of Maryland ...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz liz@tove.ARPA "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" -- 1 John 1:5