A - THE PERFORMANCE OF THE CONDOM AS A CONTRACEPTIVE

The Pearl contraceptive index is in fact relatively high for the condom,
being
between 8 and 15 (with extremes reaching up to 28)li lii.

The failure rate of the condom
in preventing pregnancy, defined as the probability of pregnancy over one
year for a
woman for whom the condom is the only means of contraception is of the
order of
15%liii liv. If the admitted failure rate of condom used as a method of
contraception is (5)

said to be 3% for couples using condoms "perfectly" (both consistently and
correctly)lv,
this failure rate is found to be 4% with couples highly motivated lvi and
rise to 12% in
"typical couples experience"(Albert and Hatcher, 1991)lvii.

Moreover, these contraceptive failure rates are conservative estimates,
since each exposure does not result in pregnancy lviii.

This condom failure may explain the relationship between condom use and
teen age pregnancy ratelix. 11% of the women's unplanned pregnancies at
the Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, USA, were attributed to condom
failurelx. 27% of the abortions performed at the hôpital Saint Louis in
Paris are said to be requested
because of condom failure lxi.

Of the 4,666 women who came to be aborted at the Marie Stopes Centre in
Leeds, England, between 1989 and 1993, 40% of them blamed
condom failure for their pregnancyl xii.
In the study reported by M.Gabbay et al.(1996)lxiii,
83% of female students presenting for post-coital contraception at the
Rusholme Health Centre, Manchester, claimed condom failure as the cause.

One of the factors for contraceptive failure when using a condom is
certainly the
inexperience of the users lxiv.

A large scale American study on the efficiency of different condoms to
prevent pregnancies showed a failure rate of 15% among young users in
their first year of use, a rate which reduces to 2% among couples who are
expert in the use of this device lxv.