WOMEN’S BODIES: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CERVICAL BARRIERS
The advantages of cervical barriers
• They are effective if used correctly every time you have intercourse.
• There are no side-effects unless you’re allergic to rubber (plastic diaphragms are available) or to spermicide if you use it.
• They are an immediately reversible form of contraception.
• They are cheap, after the initial outlay. A diaphragm lasts for several years with care. Cost is increased if used with spermicide.
• The barrier can be inserted at any time and worn more or less all the time, so that its use need not interfere with sexual arousal.
• They are good if you need contraception only occasionally or for short periods now and then. Some women use a diaphragm or cap during their fertile period if they are relying on fertility awareness for contraception.
• They do offer some protection against those STDs that affect the cervix, or that enter the upper reproductive tract through the cervix (for example, cervical wart virus infection, gonorrhoea and chlamydia).
• Some women use a diaphragm if they have sex during menstruation to save soiling the sheets. It will hold an hour or so of average menstrual flow without any spilling over.
Disadvantages of cervical barriers
• They must be fitted by someone trained to do so.
• Some women don’t like putting anything into the vagina.
• Not every woman is anatomically suited to the available range of shapes and sizes.
• Some women have problems with inserting the diaphragm or cap.
• If the barrier is not put in until sexual foreplay has begun, insertion may disturb progress and spontaneity.
• Some women find that the rim of a diaphragm presses against and irritates the urethra, causing urinary symptoms. Use of a cap may solve this problem.
• Occasionally the suction of the rim of a cap may lead to ulceration of the vaginal lining.
• Rarely, cervical barriers have been associated with toxic shock syndrome.
• Barriers in their plastic storage containers are rather too bulky for the average pocket or purse: thus they are usually not on hand for the unpredicted sexual encounter. But then there are always Marie Stopes’s makeshifts or Casanova’s half a lemon – better than nothing!
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