Contraceptive App Natural Cycles Blamed For String of Unwanted Pregnancies (standard.co.uk) 423
An anonymous reader shares a report: A contraceptive mobile phone app used by tens of thousands of British women has come under fire after reportedly sparking a string of unwanted pregnancies. Swedish birth control app Natural Cycles, which costs $55, tracks body temperature to accurately predict when in the month a woman is more likely to fall pregnant. The period monitor was hailed as a non-mood altering alternative to the pill and, if used perfectly, was found to be 99 per cent effective by researchers. But the app has come under fire after the Sodersjukhuset hospital in Stockholm lodged a complaint with the Swedish Medical Products Agency, the country's government body responsible for regulation of medical devices. It claimed staff at the hospital had recorded 37 women who had fallen pregnant in the last quarter of 2017 after using the app. One midwife said the hospital had a duty to report all side effects.
Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:2, Troll)
Swedes get burned by marketing. Who would have thought an unverifiable, exceptional claim of 99% efficacy for what's basically a fancy rhythm method, also known as "safe days", wouldn't pan out like they said?
Lucky that abortions are free in Sweden.
Re:Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Who would have thought an unverifiable, exceptional claim of 99% efficacy
You good sir might want to Reread The Friendly Article. The article clearly states that at an average the success rate is estimated to 93%.
7% of the women report getting pregnant, so the number seems to fit very well
93% is also stated on their home page : https://www.naturalcycles.com/ [naturalcycles.com]
(99% was a number stated if the app was used in strict compliance, but they know it isn't.)
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Women are only fertile 20% of the month with an average 'success rate' of fertilization being ~15-20% per month, especially when you practice abstention during your fertile period. So the app at 93% actually seems to have a slight increase or at very best a zero-effect for the chance of pregnancy.
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Actually, I believe the statistics are 80% chance of pregnancy per year for a sexually active woman who uses no protection. Which would be about 12% per month. Of course that's the mean rate, individuals can vary wildly.
Swedes interested in swedish company (Score:2)
its a swedish company and pay swedish tax's - a good thing
their thermometer is incredibly basic for what they claim to be doing and I'm going to guess the calibration is non existent or outsourced to china.
They do not seem to provide any information on the thermometer supplier I would have thought it was at least like the nokia and bluetooth...
regards
John Jones
p.s. poor harry
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Even at 99%, that's a boatload of misses heh.
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99% of cycles is a pretty good method, IMO. Going on the rough "once a month" cycle, that's one pregnancy every 8.25 years. If a woman becomes sexually active at 18, that's roughly 2 kids over the term of their fertility (women in their late 30s have really slowed down in terms of fertility.) And the moms can choose abortion if they must every 8 years or so.
The problem with this method is really human nature. Studies have shown that women are more attractive to men when they're ovulating - making strict adh
Re:Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Studies have shown that women are more attractive to men when they're ovulating
Indeed. Strippers earn 30% more in tips when they are ovulating [ehbonline.org].
Re: Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:5, Funny)
You know, it's pretty sad that as a race, we decide to abort our mistakes.
Agreed. It would be WAY cooler if we would just eat them after they're born, the way other races do!
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Or, you know, adopt them into loving families, because we are not actually wild animals and have empathy, love and altruism...
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adopt them into loving families
How many kids can we sign you up for then, two maybe three?
People who think adoption is THE ONLY ANSWER, are rarely the ones willing to open their homes and hearts to the kids needing adoption.
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Re: Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:2)
adopt them into loving families, because we are not actually wild animals and have empathy, love and altruism...
I think if you actually spoke to the kids unfortunate enough to go through the adoption racket many would vehemently disagree with your assessment of human nature.
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The world is not a perfect place. Not all people are good, and not all adoptive families are ideal, but give 13 year old kids who went through the "adoption racket" a choice of either staying in the "adoption racket" or a firing squad and see which one they overwhelmingly chose...
Re: Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:3)
What a 13 year old would choose has no bearing on what a foetus would choose. Or a newborn, for that matter. As much as I dislike the inequality between the sexes which have been created by easy access to abortion, I would much rather see 20 million abortions than 20 million children desperately praying that some kind couple will adopt them.
Failing the abortion thing, I still think the "eating them" solution has a lot going for it.
Re: Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:5, Informative)
>we are not actually wild animals and have empathy, love and altruism...
Actually, all of those things are commonly observed in wild animals as well. Humans are extremely smart, but are otherwise basically tool-using animals in every respect.
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He just used the term in the same way as the parent. Like "the human race".
Re:Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, let's be consistent about it. So what's your stance on childcare, school lunch, medical examinations for children and other aids for the mom?
Until you're born we'll fight for your life but after you ARE actually alive, you're on your own.
Face it, you're not pro life. You're anti-fucking. You want the woman to suffer from having "sinned", and you can't really say it that way because everyone would instantly consider it what it is: A bullshit reason. So it's the "sanctity of life". Bullshit. Life isn't sacred. Twice so if you believe in the invisible sky daddy who kills people according to his own advertising brochure left and right with impunity because he didn't like the cut of their jib or some other bullshit reason.
Sanctity of life, my ass...
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You need to realize before you vote for your nirvana, you likely will be one of the masses.
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As a society, we have this thing called adoption for irresponsible parents (it takes two) who get pregnant but are not equipped emotionally, mentally, financially, etc. There are a lot of responsible adults waiting to take these "unwanted" children.
You are proposing a false dichotomy. It is not either murder the baby or have a nanny state care for the mother and child in perpetuity. There is a third option, called adoption, so please get your facts straight.
Your argument, my ass...
And no, pro life people
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I don't see the issue. Human life isn't any more magical than .. life.
I get mice in the house, I kill them. And before you get all weepy eyed, and city-dweller outraged, read up on the hantavirus... and it is 100% confirmed in this area. Live capture and release would make me a monster, anyone with the hantavirus has more than a 50% chance of death.
My point? I kill mice. And an unborn fetus has fewer neurons, less brain power, is less 'aware' than a mouse for many, many months after conception.
Lots of
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So, what's so special? A soul?
Many people would argue that's exactly what makes a human fetus more special than a mouse. It doesn't make them right, but it does make them hard to argue with.
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As a society, we have this thing called adoption for irresponsible parents (it takes two) who get pregnant but are not equipped emotionally, mentally, financially, etc
No. As a society we have this thing called adoption[1] for irresponsible women who are not equipped emotionally, mentally or financially to be a parent. Irresponsible men can, and very often are, forced into parental obligations regardless of any (un)willingness on their part.
[1] You can substitute the word "abortion" and still that sentence will be correct.
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Yes, let's be consistent about it.
Okay - I propose that a man's consent is required before he is made into an unwilling parent, just like a women has to consent to being a parent.
What? You didn't really want consistency? Then why ask for it?
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I propose that a man's consent is required before he is made into an unwilling parent
Are there a lot of incidents of men having their sperm stolen?
Re:Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
The apple does not fall far from the tree.
You're from the same fucking tree.
wear a damn condom. Contraceptives exist and they work
The irony. From multiple sources:
If you use condoms perfectly every single time you have sex, they're 98% effective at preventing pregnancy.
So, less effective than this app. Of course, they're also not used perfectly. Frankly the only time you can guarantee avoiding pregnancy while using a condom is if you're having gay sex with another man.
My whore sister
If your sister has sex for money, didn't use contraceptives and only has three children then she's actually doing pretty well.
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Let me get this straight:
1) Conception to birth - Must not kill / Ok to die from lack of health care / food / shelter
2) Birth to 18 - Should not kill / Ok to die from lack of health care / food / shelter
3) 18 to Death - Kill at will / Ok to die from lack of health care / food / shelter
As far as I can tell this about sums up the US view on life and death for a human being.
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"Killing through inaction"? First of all, that's a very different thing than deliberate killing. Second, you are painting with an awfully broad brush. I know that plenty of religious people spend an enormous amount of time and money on the charitable aspects of their religion. It would be pretty straightforward to argue that they are even more moral than people who force others to be charitable unwillingly through taxes. I could play the same strawman game as you and paint pro-choice people as selfish peopl
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And I see you're a fine example of what happens when mistakes are carried to term: a sanctimonious blindness to sarcasm. Or maybe you picked that up after birth? Who knows.
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I would much rather have fewer children born with more born into families that WANT them, than more children born with more born into families that never wanted children but made a mistake, bad call, etc.
Re:Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
What a self-righteous load of BS.
Yes, people should have to deal with their choices, but they should also use their God-given brains and technology to do just that - deal with their choices in the best way for them.
Or should they have to live with that choice forever? Or can they rectify the mistake and move on? In other cases in life, it's the latter, isn't it. If someone steals a car, do they have to keep the car forever? No - they can give it back and confess, sell it and move on, etc. If someone is cruel to another at some point in time, can't they apologize later? Robbery, lying, cheating, etc. People need to be able to move on after their sins, right?
You may think this is different because "another life" is involved. Fine; Let's put aside the fact that there's no scientific evidence that a fetus has a conscious spirit in there that's independent of the mother at the point of conception. Let's just talk religion (Christian dogma). Consider the following: If there IS a spirit in that fetus that is slain in an abortion, God will either just 1) give them another body to come down to this Earth to live out their life again somewhere else, or 2) take that spirit right up into Heaven to live with Him forever - and eventually be resurrected with their own bodies. There is no third option. In either scenario, the baby is ultimately BETTER off, aren't they? Isn't either scenario better than if they're born into this world as an unwanted nuisance (or worse).
In this world, freedom of choice trumps life. It was God's plan to give us choice - along with the ability to repent of our sins and move on. Abortion allows some people to move on, and until we know better about whether a baby has its own spirit or not at conception (if it does have a spirit, that changes things, IMO), it is the compromise that we should live with in modern society.
Disclaimer: I personally abhor abortion. I've given up a child for adoption to give them a better life than I could've ever given them back then as an irresponsible teenager. (And living with that is tough at times today, almost 30 years later - just like an abortion would be for some, never knowing "what if").
Re: Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:4, Informative)
Point of clarification: In Mormon dogma (subset of Christianity), the idea that babies all go to hell without baptism is an abomination. That would make getting into heaven kind of a lottery (were you born at the wrong time in the wrong place? Your mom had an abortion? Tough beans...), vs. grace + repentance.
Moroni 8 [lds.org] (from the Book of Mormon) covers this idea in more detail, but in short God takes all unbaptized children that die under a certain age (where you start to know right from wrong) straight up into heaven. But that's another religious topic entirely...
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Re: Swedes try product because of marketing (Score:3)
Free as in your first thought isn't whether you can cover the copay.
99% effective? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you'd expect that if at least 3700 women used it. ...Ignoring every other aspect of why it's stupid to count on this if you didn't want to get pregnant, anyway.
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You'd expect that every year.
Not every quarter.
Also, this is only one hospital.
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You'd expect that every year.
Not every quarter.
Also, this is only one hospital.
Really, you'd expect people not using any actual contraception not to get pregnant?
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No
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It is, it's called "the rhythm method".
I still call my first daughter "rhythm method". Her mother calls her "Jennifer" but I am more correct.
Re:99% effective? (Score:5, Informative)
You realize that this is actually a valid technique that has been used for many years, right? It does work if done properly because the female body does give signs when fertile. The problem is that it should be done with a lot of coaching from someone who knows what they are doing, which tends to be a failure of most apps.
Here's a web site for people who are hoping to have a baby.
http://americanpregnancy.org/g... [americanpregnancy.org]
Can you get pregnant if you have sex DURING YOUR PERIOD?
Yes! Surprise! Semen stays on the job for days after the sex occurred. Those hard-working little guys don't give up right away.
Can I ovulate without having a period?
Sure! Now figure out how to time ovulation when she's skipping periods.
Don't women ovulate on the 14th day after the period starts?
Yes! And also pretty much anytime between the 11th and 21st days.
Good luck with timing that!
And keep in mind that the semen lasts for days, so we're really talking about the 5th-22nd day being a viable target.
Does the likelihood of conception failure increase with the income of the male partner?
Yes! and it's exponential! (OK, I made that one up)
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Re:99% effective? (Score:5, Insightful)
Valid technique, yes. Science does back up the fact that this is a valid technique. However...
...its efficacy is terrible. Yes, the female body does give signs when fertile, or more accurately, when preparing to ovulate. The problem is that said signs are like pissing in the ocean compared to the hundreds of other signs the body gives off on a regular basis. This makes it nearly impossible to use this technique. Even more so if the woman has any health problems. Thyroid slightly out of whack? Oh well, enjoy the next nine months. Sick? Too bad.
The problem is that this technique works in theory, but fails miserably in practice even with "coaching," whatever that means. I am not inviting a coach into my bedroom to tell me when it is safe to fuck my wife and not get her pregnant.
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Fertility awareness is in the ballpark of effectiveness as withdraw or condone use..
I want to see someone called Condon to condone condom use.
It's the only way.
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How do the statistics differentiate between women that use the app but don't have sex - between relationships, etc, and women who use it because they have sex so often they can't keep things straight and need an app to manage a simple periodic cycle. If you want to increase the statistics have a bunch of celibate nuns install the app on their smartphones.
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So, you'd expect that if at least 3700 women used it.
Not quite, this is just one hospital, so discounting a local phenomena that's 3700 app users who would be attending that hospital.
And 37 is the cases they know about, depending on how they got this number there could be a lot more at just that hospital they don't know about.
I'm also not sure what 99% means in this context. Per year? Then you need to multiply those quarterly positives by 4. 99% effective per sexual encounter? You're going to end up with a lot of pregnancies. 99% less than absolutely no prote
Google Play Store page (Score:2)
The Google Play Store [google.com] pages mentions between 100'000 and 500'000 installs, and there are around 6'000 evaluation.
As it's a method with a non-zero failure rate, and given the significantly huge number of women using it, *pregnancy are bound to happen*.
Duh.
(Also note that the 99% is if the method is used always perfectly. Actual real-world result are going to be worse due to mis-use)
Re:99% effective? (Score:5, Informative)
We signed up for a class through SymptoPro through our local church, an organization that provides workshops and materials about it. In summary, I'll the say method is definitely more scientific than old "rhythm" methods, but still leaves a lot to be desired. According to their materials (and duly backed up by studies, as far as I can tell), time between menstruation and ovulation can be quite variable (hence failure of rhythm methods), but time after to the next menstruation is be fairly predictable for a given woman, and further the time of ovulation should be roughly predictable from physical symptoms, and thus also the likely times of fertility, taking into account other factors such as sperm lifetime etc. (the materials are adamant they don't try to predict ovulation per se).
The rules are very complex, but the basic "intro setup" is this: Each day the woman should take her basal body temperature. This must be done in the morning right after waking (ideally still in bed) to avoid noise from other activity. [Work swing shift? Have an over- or under- active immune system? Good luck with that.] Each day she should evaluate her vaginal discharge (character and amount), and for extra accuracy also her cervical opening (yup, you read that right). Each cycle, the last day of these fertile "signs" is taken to be "peak day" (I presume correlated with ovulation, but they don't come out and say it directly). After this peak day is met, she looks for three temperature readings all higher than the previous six; if the third is 0.4 degrees F higher than the highest of the 6, then you're good to sex it up that evening (assuming avoiding pregnancy). There are special cases involved if the third day doesn't reach the 0.4 above level, etc. There are also more advanced, less conservative rules available once 6 to 12 months of individual data have been gathered. It's really the kind of thing that should be handled by software, because it's so difficult to remember and apply. (I could also see it being fertile ground for software bugs. Pun intended.)
Is it scientific, and is it effective? I'll say "kinda" to the first, and "mostly" to the second. There have indeed been studies on pregnancy rates, and results seem comparable to condoms (though condoms have come a long way; high-90s% is about what is claimed by symptopro for perfect use; results vary across studies, YMMV, etc.) What bothers me is that I have yet to identify any science behind the rulesets themselves. Why three days after six, and where does this 0.4 degrees magic number come from? I'd love to be proven wrong, but I think these are essentially someone's hunch.
As to effectiveness, I think it's reasonably effective primarily because it's so conservative. According to the rules, we got on average maybe 6 days per month we *could* have sex and avoid pregnancy (aside from menstruation days); a couple of months we had 0 available days. We ended up using condoms quite a bit anyway. On the plus side, via all this charting we learned that this isn't quite normal: many women get closer to 10 days/cycle of infertile time (even with the basic ruleset), and my wife may have a mild "luteal phase defect." Now that we're actively trying to start our family, we'll be talking to a doctor about it.
In the end, I'd say it's not a terrible program and it's nice to have options. But, more research is needed, and it's far from the easy, one-size-fits-all solution NFP proponents tout.
Pearl Index ? (Score:2)
I suspect that the 99% figure is the complement of the Pearl score (i.e.: a pearl score of 1%).
i.e.: if 100 women use it (perfectly) after 1 year you'll witness 1 pregnancy.
Now imagine :
- The users aren't applying the method perfectly (actual real-world pearl score is higher).
- According to the Google Play Store [google.com] page, there are WAY more than 100 women using it.
So you're bound to see quite a few pregnancies.
That's why, in the medical field, when you DEFINITELY want to see NO pregnancies (e.g.
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Some of the women using it are probably trying to get pregrant.
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Yeah. Call me a cynic but "You don't need a condom, I'm on the pill" is more likely to result in no sex than me going bareback.
Side Effects? (Score:2)
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Last time I checked the ones that are so heavily against contraceptives aren't so hot on buttfucking or deepthroating either.
Religion and consistency, it just doesn't mix.
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It's about the only side effect possible, and as is stated in the article, on every box for every birth control, and in every pamphlet in the Planned Parenthood waiting room- "No method of birth control is 100% effective.".
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The result would be a millennial, so 30-35 years to life
This may come as a surprise (Score:2)
There is still a probability greater than zero during the "less likely" time. And that positive probability may be significantly higher than other methods of birth control.
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And no none permanent method has a probability of zero, including abstinence because people have a habit of not stopping to abstain.
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Abstaining isn't 100% either.
There's always rape.
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Abstaining isn't 100% for the men either. I've seen estimates that 10% of so-called fathers didn't impregnate the mother.
Re: This may come as a surprise (Score:2)
Err. You're bolding the wrong parts there. Try this:
A contraceptive mobile phone app used by tens of thousands of British women
The 37 pregnancies were reported by a single hospital. In Stockholm. You may be surprised to hear this, but Stockholm is not British. Nor does 37 cases in one hospital equal all cases everywhere.
Re: This may come as a surprise (Score:2)
As for the detail you mentioned on Stockholm not being British, I do admit I didn't know that.
That's kinda the most pertinent detail because it makes all of your math irrelevant.
Realistically none of the math would be all that useful even if Stockholm were a city in England, since, again, you would be looking at reports in one hospital and applying it against all users across an entire nation. It would have no hope of giving an answer that was even remotely informative. It would be like looking at traffic accidents in one tiny city and saying "well, this city only had 20 accidents this year, and t
Rhythm Method (Score:5, Funny)
Do you know what they call couples that use the rhythm method for birth control?
.
.
Parents
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Geeze, was this app written by the Catholic church?!
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Oh man. I had to clean my monitor after drinking coffee and reading that one! Nice!
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It's a fairly old joke. I came here to make it myself.
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Funny enough, but there was a similar app on iOS a few years ago (right when the App Store was new and novel on iOS).
At the time, piracy on iOS was big, and easily detected by apps who could see their application XML file was modified (it required an extra line to tell iOS it was unsigned, so apps would check for the element).
One developer of such an add simply offset the calendar 14 days in "pirated" mode. If you bought it, it gave correct dates. If you pirated it, you got erroneous dates.
Side effects may or may not include... (Score:2)
"I was ovulating and was totally horny and had to get some and my boyfriend didn't pull out fast enough, so the app didn't REALLY work for me."
Or maybe the whole, "I cut it too close to my ovulation time and my man's sperm must've been really hardy. It's the app's fault for not knowing that," possibility?
In the end, there is no non-artificial, bulletproof method of birth control that works for everyone that is sexually active because there are way too many variables.
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You're right. Abstinence didn't work for Mary the mother of Jesus.
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Abstinence also fails when a woman is raped.
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Efficient contraception. (Score:2)
The pill and condoms are nowhere near.
When used together, they are very close to perfect.
There's a reason why the current advices given by doctors (e.g.: because the girl is on a teratogenic medication) is to combine TWO contraceptive.
If one fails (e.g.: condom badly handled ends up torn), chances are low that the second fails at the exact same time (e.g.: forgotten pill).
The only 100% ones I know of are abstinence ....
Hahaha.... very funny.
We're a specie that got where we are currently mostly by sexual reproduction. We have strong instinct inciting us to do it (those who weren't interested
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Keep in mind that then people who tend to believe that abstinence works also believe a story about "virgin birth".
Well (Score:2)
What can I say. That's fucked up.
Software is like sex (Score:2)
"One mistake, and you'll provide support for a lifetime."
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Not true. Try, just TRY to kill a child process out here in meatland.
Unfortunate side effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Idocracy was not supposed to be a documentary.
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is that this results in stupid people having babies. Idocracy was not supposed to be a documentary.
I'd rather be stupid than mean.
That's not where the phone goes (Score:5, Funny)
Really, that's not where the phone goes, ladies.
Special name for that (Score:5, Funny)
There's a special, scientific term for women who use the rhythm method of birth control. They're called 'mothers'.
- Necron69
This is your momma's... (Score:2)
Birth Control. And it didn't work back then. We wouldn't have put research into chemicals if this was 100% effective.
--
One, Two, Three...Infinity
Nothing new here (Score:2)
As Robert Heinlein once observed, the medical term for women who use the rhythm method is "mother."
When are men gonna get a pill (Score:2)
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liar, you took it out of your pants and jacked off
Oh brother (Score:2)
Getting to hear what a bunch of Slashdotters think about natural planning ... is like asking Kalahari bushmen what stocks to short this week.
Or something.
Oh those 1% (Score:2)
As a person who used to build software under the different global health regulations (think the FDA in the USA) - I totally understand this. Sounds situation normal.
First - 99% had to be proven during pre-market. Actual - 37 women out of how many using the app?
All hospitals are supposed to report back to the vendor and FDA any issues. Later on "actual vs expected" is compared and the 99% claim will be reevaluated. In the USA the vendor is responsible for deciding when to change this (although the FDA can
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Lawyer says no...
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The religious and/or emotional response to abortion has always been a problem. It's almost not even worth debating four and a half decades after Roe V. Wade was decided.
To all Christians, Muslims, and other religious sects: Abortion is about the freedom of choice - which is God's greatest gift to us all (even Jesus Christ's grace requires us accepting it by free will, right?) Based on that cornerstone of Christianity, abortion HAS to be the mother's decision about a fetus growing in her body until it's a vi
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Abortion is about the freedom of choice - which is God's greatest gift to us all (even Jesus Christ's grace requires us accepting it by free will, right?)
That is very distinctly a southern US charismatic theology, shared by many rural Baptist churches, that is not shared by worldwide mainstream Christianity. Even in Mormonism, the closest you get is "free moral agency", in which a person cannot and will not act outside of their own spiritual natures ("the devil can't give you more temptation than you can handle"), a view shared by protestant Armenian theology.
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Not sure what rock YOU've been under, but for the last thousand years religion has never been that fucking irrelevant.
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To be fair, there's a lot of justification walking around for post-natal abortion.