The New Unsafe Sex

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Getty Images A recent study suggests coitus interruptus is an effective form of birth control. The Daily Beast’s Tracy Quan on why the push for pulling out is flawed.

Is coitus interruptus making a comeback? Margaret Sanger must be spinning in her grave.

If you thought the New York Times was joking when they hyped an academic paper that champions the so-called “pullout method” as the next big thing in contraception, you weren’t alone. The Times report refers to an article—“Better Than Nothing or Savvy Risk-Reduction Practice?”—in the June issue of Contraception, the official journal of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.

One laddish website is touting the news as a “happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.”

Rachel K. Jones, the paper's lead author, is a senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a respected think-tank known (until now) for its sane, wonkish approach to sexual health. Jones and her co-authors claim that withdrawal is "almost as effective as the male condom” for preventing pregnancy. The belief that pre-ejaculate fluid contains sperm lacks “supporting evidence,” they tell us. If this means there is never any sperm in such fluid, hooray, but what woman wants to wager her impregnation chances on a lack of supporting evidence?

Even more to the point, the folk wisdom—endorsed by this paper—that withdrawal is a valid method puts women in a very awkward position when discussing contraception with male sex partners. Getting men to take birth control seriously has never been easy. One laddish website is astutely touting the news as a “happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.”

A man proposing withdrawal instead of latex is one of various landmines a single woman may encounter out there. This “surprising option” (as the tone-deaf Times headline calls it) is often viewed as caddish. It’s not just that withdrawal is low-tech. Men should know that a woman may be insulted by the suggestion—especially if she's personally opposed to abortion—and women using withdrawal might be ambivalent about pregnancy.

Another tidbit to amaze your drinking buddies with: according to the Contraception authors, couples using withdrawal should be spared “unnecessary levels of anxiety” about the risk of pregnancy.

Anxiety about contraception is both good and necessary. It's like the anxiety you feelabout flying through the windshield of your car that makes you buckle up. Even if there are a few short rides during which you didn’t buckle, do you really want road-safety experts telling you not to worry about it?

One danger is that women will be henpecked by men who now claim that unprotected sex is medically safe. I can’t help but feel that researchers and health care providers who “just kind of dismiss withdrawal,” as Jones puts it, are actually doing us all a favor.

“When this [article] first came out,” Pepper Schwartz told me, “it was a quandary for educators.” A sociologist at the University of Washington, Schwartz is the author of Prime, Finding Your Perfect Match, and numerous other books on sexuality. “Withdrawal may prevent pregnancy, but anyone who works with young people doesn’t like it because of disease.”

Regarding pre-ejaculatory fluid, she says, “One study I saw says there’s no sperm, but it’s not the last word. I’m still a big fan of condoms because this is the only method that keeps out the diseases that can hurt your fertility.”

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