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Trends in Contraception and Sterilization in Australia
Author(s) -
Santow Gigi
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of obstetrics and gynaecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.734
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1479-828X
pISSN - 0004-8666
DOI - 10.1111/j.1479-828x.1991.tb02781.x
Subject(s) - pill , sterilization (economics) , family planning , medicine , tubal ligation , abstinence , developed country , national survey of family growth , demography , fertility , population , gynecology , female sterilization , family medicine , research methodology , environmental health , sociology , nursing , psychiatry , monetary economics , economics , foreign exchange market , foreign exchange
EDITORIAL COMMENT: The purpose of this comment is to encourage readers to give this paper the close attention it deserves ‐ the summary is too modest, and the important information in the tables may be overlooked if readers do not study them in conjunction with the text. It is noteworthy that of women aged 40–44 years in 1986, 35% had had a tubal ligation, another 11% had had a hysterectomy and a further 16% of these women had partners who had undergone vasectomy. In these data, which were collected in 1986, the condom made a miserable showing as a contraceptive, but as noted by the author ‘this is not to say that coitus‐related methods may not gain some support if the motivation for their use is not entirely contraceptive ‐ sexually transmitted diseases in general and AIDS in particular’. Enquiry of the manufacturers surprised the editor by revealing that total sales of condoms in Australia (2 per person per year or 34 million per year) have increased only about 50% in the last 10 years. This is in accord with the data in this paper and indicates that there has been little change since 1986. Summary: Life‐history data collected in a national survey of women in 1986 are used to derive the first national estimates of trends in contraception and sterilization in Australia over the last 30 years. The pill rapidly became the method of choice after its release in 1961. The intrauterine device, the other truly modern method, has never attained the same popularity. The move toward sterilization dates from the early 1970s and has been so complete that women of 35 or older are now more likely to be protected by a ligation or laparoscopic sterilization than by the pill or, indeed, by all other methods combined. Unmarried women are now indistinguishable from married women on the basis of their use of contraception, and childless married women are now more likely to be using a reversible method than married women with children.