We had sex without a condom and my period’s late. Am I pregnant?
Someone asked us:
My boyfriend and I had sex with and without a condom multiple times this month, I’m on birth control, but it’s low dose. He never came inside me, but my period is almost a week late and i havent taken a pregnancy test yet. We’re broke, and I can’t have a kid at 14 years old. Please help?
If you’re using your
correctly and use a back-up method when you need to (like if you miss a pill), that means you’re taking the right steps to prevent pregnancy. For example, research shows that fewer than 1 in every 100 women who use birth control pills becomes pregnant within a year of using them if she always takes them correctly.
So what does fewer than 1 in every 100 women mean exactly? For one thing, it doesn’t mean that somewhere out there half of one woman is walking around in maternity sweatpants bitterly stocking up on diapers and baby food. What it does mean is that in a group of more than 100 ladies who take their pill correctly all the time, there may be one woman whose birth control pills fail and who ends up pregnant. Basically it’s very rare, but it can happen.
While those are really good odds in your favor already as far as pregnancy goes, using condoms when you have sex is the only way to avoid sexually transmitted infections. If you take your pills as directed every day and use a condom every time you have sex, it’s way more likely that you’ll end up valedictorian AND prom queen AND class president by the time you’re a senior than ending up pregnant.
-Emily at Planned Parenthood