What do women use when they stop using the pill?

Current use of oral contraceptives among currently married women aged 15-44 declined from 25 percent to 13 percent between 1973 and 1982, while ever-use increased from 60 percent to 80 percent. By 1982, the pill appeared to be used mainly to delay first pregnancies, secondarily to space subsequent conceptions, and only rarely as a means of ending childbearing. Most women who had stopped using the pill by 1982 had done so on their own initiative: Only about one-third had been advised by a doctor to discontinue use. Virtually all former users gave some physical problem connected with pill use as a reason for quitting the method. At the time they quit, former users had been taking the pill for an average of 3.2 years. The decline in current use of the pill during the 1970s coincided with a marked increase in contraceptive sterilization, but was not the result of a direct switching from the pill to sterilization by individual women. Only 21 percent of women who quit the pill chose sterilization as their next method. The majority--60 percent--switched to nonpermanent methods, the condom being the most popular in all age-groups; the proportions selecting the condom as their next method ranged from 20 percent of 15-19-year-olds to 12 percent of 30-44-year-olds. Nineteen percent of former pill users did not adopt any method after discontinuing the pill.