Is the 'withdrawal' method, effective enough to prevent pregnancy, or should i take an Emergency Contraceptive Pill?

Question

After having Unprotected sex yesterday, im feeling nervous and a little anxious that only the withdrawal method was used as a method of birth control.... (not usually how i roll..).

Im wondering if i should use an emergency Contraceptive from a pharmacy, however i have taken it before and it made me feel quite Ill and left me with shitty PMS like symptoms.

Smart thing to do is to get the Contraceptive... right?

Answer

Every single study (both saying sperm is present in precum and those saying it's not there) have issues and none of the studies are able to be replicated (which is a cornerstone of the scientific method). Some issues with the studies saying no sperm is present is that they didn't check sperm count within two minutes (so they started dying), they didn't ensure urination between samples and most importantly small sample sizes (you can't accurately extrapolate the data for the general population). As for the studies saying sperm is present they too had issues like small sample sizes (same as above), there were concerns that some of the men didn't produce precum (or used regular ejaculate in its place) and it goes on and on though they did have participants urinate, and checked within two minutes. What they need to do is run a proper clinical trial with a significant cross section of ages, races etc and ensure the participants urinate before a sample is given. Until these criteria are met I think it would be safer to err on the side of caution and treat precum the same as regular ejaculate especially if you're trying to avoid pregnancy. In my opinion, it's not worth the risk to possibly get pregnant because of faulty science. That being said the pull out method has up to a 27% failure rate. You need to decide if you're comfortable worth those odds or not. If not get plan b, you have 72 hours from the time  you had unprotected sex. If you don't take plan b all you can do is test if your next period is late

Answer

I got pregnant when my husband and I were engaged, our only methods of protection was the pull out method. He was very good about holding his orgasm and not cumming in me at all, so I was completely shocked when I missed my period and found I was pregnant!

Is the 'withdrawal' method, effective enough to prevent pregnancy, or should i take an Emergency Contraceptive Pill?

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