Condoms-What Are They?-Are They Effective?

Latex condoms have a contraceptive failure rate of 3% per year. This means that if 100 couples having regular sex used condoms correctly every time for a year, 3 of the women would become pregnant. Of course, if you do not use condoms every time you have sex, or if you do not use them properly, they will not be as effective, and the 'failure rate' would be about 15%.

Condoms have an important advantage over other types of contraception – they give good protection against sexually transmitted diseases. As a result, many women who use the contraceptive pill for protection against pregnancy, still like their partner to use condoms.