Women do not simply become pregnant by themselves.
Male sperm has to reach a females fertile egg.
For a woman to prevent pregnancy they need to prevent their eggs from becoming fertilized by male sperm by birth control such as abstinance, pills, condoms, etc.
This all sounds rather simple to do yet some women still become "accidentally" pregnant even though they had absolutely no desire to conceive and have done absolutely everything possible to prevent conception.
In 2010, GOP conservatives and Tea Party candidates campaigned on creating jobs and fighting to keep government out of healthcare.
In 2011 the opposite is happening - No real help for job creation and Government forced tests and obstacles for women wanting certain medical procedures that effectively create a coerced and forced pregnancy slavery via Religious Right pushed Republican legislation.
This is all done under a rather false flag of "Pro-Life" advocates and perceived rights to life of an embryo or fetus and the problem is the sole fault of women mindlessly spreading their legs and letting men "get them pregnant" and using abortion as some sort of birth control.
This scenario is not the typical reality of how women have unintended pregnancies.
Many women use oral contraceptive pills to prevent pregnancy and the pill is about 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy. Even so, between 2 and 8 percent of women become pregnant each year while using it.
A Family Planning study, found that of 1 020 women referred for abortions, a fifth claimed to have been using the pill, one of the methods commonly regarded as the most effective for birth control.
Here are five things that may cause the pill to become less effective or even fail:
1.) Not taking the pill at the same time every day
2.) Missing a dose.
3.) Alcohol may reduce the effectiveness of the pill
4.) Antibiotics/seizure medication
4.) Antibiotics/seizure medication
5.) Taking a generic form of the pill.
An 'accidentally on purpose' pregnancy may even be the consequence of a woman's insecurity about her own fertility. The frequent discussions about infertility in newspapers, women's magazines and on television may lead some women to doubt their own ability to have a child when the time is right. If a woman who has never had a child frequently reads about the sub-fertility problems of others, and takes to heart the statistic that one couple in six experiences fertility problems, she may well suffer all manner of doubts and fears about her reproductive future. She may not want a child now but in the recesses of her subconscious mind she may be desperate to discover if she can. She may even develop an irrational belief that she is subfertile and be cavalier as to her contraception as a consequence. This may also lead to an 'accidentally on purpose' pregnancy.
Men can just as easily manipulate things so that risk situations occur. He may 'forget' to buy condoms, insist if they have sex he will withdraw before ejaculation and then get 'carried away', or he may deliberately engineer situations where unprotected sex is likely. Sometimes these manoeuvres are quite conscious and deliberate.
A shocking percentage of unintended pregnancies were caused by abusive men sabotaging contraception, using pregnancy as a weapon to control their partners.
A study from the National Domestic Violence Hotline found that 1 in 4 women calling the hotline had experienced some form of pregnancy coercion.
the definition of "rape" just doesn't take into account the wide array of ways women get pregnant against their will because of domestic or sexual violence. If a wife-beater flushes his wife's pills down the toilet and gets her pregnant in order to trap her in an abusive relationship, putting obstacles between that woman and her abortion is a form of siding with the abuser.
It would be wrong to see unplanned pregnancy as a problem only for young women. Public attention focuses on teenage pregnancies partly because they are ideal subjects for the sensational media stories and partly because they are a particularly vulnerable social group, but older women are also at risk.
It is no longer expected that women in their twenties should be either married and preparing to embark on family life or on the lookout for a husband. The twenty-somethings of the 1990s are likely to be continuing their education, forging careers, or simply enjoying a break between leaving their parents family life and starting their own.
Even if a couple settles into a stable heterosexual relationship and achieves a secure income and a decent home, it is still considered normal and appropriate for them to defer children until their late twenties or early thirties. And, all the time that they are deferring a deliberate pregnancy they are at risk of an accidental one.
Whilst previous generations may have assumed that any pregnancy was wanted and deliberate so long as the couple were married, married couples today may have other plans which do not include children at all. Society in general still assumes that 'normal' women will want children at some time in their lives, but an increasing number of couples are deciding that their priorities lie elsewhere and parenthood is not for them.
It is easy to forget that unplanned pregnancies are not just a problem for those who wish to remain childless. They can be just as great a problem to couples who already have planned and wanted children. Another addition to the family may bring about emotional and financial pressures that are damaging to the couple and their existing children. A woman struggling to cope with young children may find that organising her own contraception is the one job that drops from her busy agenda.
Women are at particular risk of accidental pregnancy shortly after the birth of a planned child, when they may be preoccupied with mothering and not yet settled into a new contraceptive regime. Fertility can return within a few months of childbirth, particularly if the new mother is not breastfeeding.
Similarly, a surprise pregnancy can be a particular nightmare for a woman approaching her menopause. We expect our sex lives to continue until well into old age, and while a woman's fertility level starts to decline from her mid-thirties, women can and do get pregnant right up until their menopause. There are many reasons why an unplanned pregnancy at this stage in life can seem disastrous. A couple may resent the thought of having to embark on another round of child-raising just when they were organizing some time for themselves. The woman may be distressed by the knowledge that the child will have a far greater statistical risk of a genetic disability such as Downs Syndrome.
The couple may worry that they are just 'too old' to cope with the stresses and strains of baby-care. Yet as long as they are having sex they are at risk - and their risk may be increased if they have relied on the pill for contraception and the woman has now been advised to change, perhaps because she smokes, to a new and unfamiliar method.
An added difficulty for an older women with an unexpected pregnancy is that she may mistake the absence of her periods for the start of menopausal symptoms and not identify the problem for months.
In conclusion accidental pregnancy is a potential problem for all fertile women who are sexually active. We live in an age when it is accepted that pregnancies are no longer events that just happen either by the 'grace of God' or by 'acts of nature'. Our lives are organized to incorporate sex for enjoyment and emotional satisfaction and it is seen as quite normal that we should wish to suppress our fertility. We expect to plan pregnancy just as we expect to be able to plan other aspects of our lives. Unfortunately keeping our fertility in check is far easier to say than to do.
Male sperm has to reach a females fertile egg.
For a woman to prevent pregnancy they need to prevent their eggs from becoming fertilized by male sperm by birth control such as abstinance, pills, condoms, etc.
This all sounds rather simple to do yet some women still become "accidentally" pregnant even though they had absolutely no desire to conceive and have done absolutely everything possible to prevent conception.
In 2010, GOP conservatives and Tea Party candidates campaigned on creating jobs and fighting to keep government out of healthcare.
In 2011 the opposite is happening - No real help for job creation and Government forced tests and obstacles for women wanting certain medical procedures that effectively create a coerced and forced pregnancy slavery via Religious Right pushed Republican legislation.
This is all done under a rather false flag of "Pro-Life" advocates and perceived rights to life of an embryo or fetus and the problem is the sole fault of women mindlessly spreading their legs and letting men "get them pregnant" and using abortion as some sort of birth control.
This scenario is not the typical reality of how women have unintended pregnancies.
Many women use oral contraceptive pills to prevent pregnancy and the pill is about 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy. Even so, between 2 and 8 percent of women become pregnant each year while using it.
A Family Planning study, found that of 1 020 women referred for abortions, a fifth claimed to have been using the pill, one of the methods commonly regarded as the most effective for birth control.
Here are five things that may cause the pill to become less effective or even fail:
1.) Not taking the pill at the same time every day
2.) Missing a dose.
3.) Alcohol may reduce the effectiveness of the pill
4.) Antibiotics/seizure medication
4.) Antibiotics/seizure medication
5.) Taking a generic form of the pill.
An 'accidentally on purpose' pregnancy may even be the consequence of a woman's insecurity about her own fertility. The frequent discussions about infertility in newspapers, women's magazines and on television may lead some women to doubt their own ability to have a child when the time is right. If a woman who has never had a child frequently reads about the sub-fertility problems of others, and takes to heart the statistic that one couple in six experiences fertility problems, she may well suffer all manner of doubts and fears about her reproductive future. She may not want a child now but in the recesses of her subconscious mind she may be desperate to discover if she can. She may even develop an irrational belief that she is subfertile and be cavalier as to her contraception as a consequence. This may also lead to an 'accidentally on purpose' pregnancy.
Men can just as easily manipulate things so that risk situations occur. He may 'forget' to buy condoms, insist if they have sex he will withdraw before ejaculation and then get 'carried away', or he may deliberately engineer situations where unprotected sex is likely. Sometimes these manoeuvres are quite conscious and deliberate.
A shocking percentage of unintended pregnancies were caused by abusive men sabotaging contraception, using pregnancy as a weapon to control their partners.
A study from the National Domestic Violence Hotline found that 1 in 4 women calling the hotline had experienced some form of pregnancy coercion.
the definition of "rape" just doesn't take into account the wide array of ways women get pregnant against their will because of domestic or sexual violence. If a wife-beater flushes his wife's pills down the toilet and gets her pregnant in order to trap her in an abusive relationship, putting obstacles between that woman and her abortion is a form of siding with the abuser.
It would be wrong to see unplanned pregnancy as a problem only for young women. Public attention focuses on teenage pregnancies partly because they are ideal subjects for the sensational media stories and partly because they are a particularly vulnerable social group, but older women are also at risk.
It is no longer expected that women in their twenties should be either married and preparing to embark on family life or on the lookout for a husband. The twenty-somethings of the 1990s are likely to be continuing their education, forging careers, or simply enjoying a break between leaving their parents family life and starting their own.
Even if a couple settles into a stable heterosexual relationship and achieves a secure income and a decent home, it is still considered normal and appropriate for them to defer children until their late twenties or early thirties. And, all the time that they are deferring a deliberate pregnancy they are at risk of an accidental one.
Whilst previous generations may have assumed that any pregnancy was wanted and deliberate so long as the couple were married, married couples today may have other plans which do not include children at all. Society in general still assumes that 'normal' women will want children at some time in their lives, but an increasing number of couples are deciding that their priorities lie elsewhere and parenthood is not for them.
It is easy to forget that unplanned pregnancies are not just a problem for those who wish to remain childless. They can be just as great a problem to couples who already have planned and wanted children. Another addition to the family may bring about emotional and financial pressures that are damaging to the couple and their existing children. A woman struggling to cope with young children may find that organising her own contraception is the one job that drops from her busy agenda.
Women are at particular risk of accidental pregnancy shortly after the birth of a planned child, when they may be preoccupied with mothering and not yet settled into a new contraceptive regime. Fertility can return within a few months of childbirth, particularly if the new mother is not breastfeeding.
Similarly, a surprise pregnancy can be a particular nightmare for a woman approaching her menopause. We expect our sex lives to continue until well into old age, and while a woman's fertility level starts to decline from her mid-thirties, women can and do get pregnant right up until their menopause. There are many reasons why an unplanned pregnancy at this stage in life can seem disastrous. A couple may resent the thought of having to embark on another round of child-raising just when they were organizing some time for themselves. The woman may be distressed by the knowledge that the child will have a far greater statistical risk of a genetic disability such as Downs Syndrome.
The couple may worry that they are just 'too old' to cope with the stresses and strains of baby-care. Yet as long as they are having sex they are at risk - and their risk may be increased if they have relied on the pill for contraception and the woman has now been advised to change, perhaps because she smokes, to a new and unfamiliar method.
An added difficulty for an older women with an unexpected pregnancy is that she may mistake the absence of her periods for the start of menopausal symptoms and not identify the problem for months.
In conclusion accidental pregnancy is a potential problem for all fertile women who are sexually active. We live in an age when it is accepted that pregnancies are no longer events that just happen either by the 'grace of God' or by 'acts of nature'. Our lives are organized to incorporate sex for enjoyment and emotional satisfaction and it is seen as quite normal that we should wish to suppress our fertility. We expect to plan pregnancy just as we expect to be able to plan other aspects of our lives. Unfortunately keeping our fertility in check is far easier to say than to do.
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