Having or avoiding a pregnancy

The same question from both sides: preventing a pregnancy, achieving one, or ending one. Five pages that answer each other, because people move from one to the next over a lifetime.

Ovulation and fertile window calculator

Ovulation, fertile window and next periods over three cycles, with what this calculation is really worth.

Contraception

This page reviews every method of contraception, from the most reversible to the most permanent, and gives for each its real-world effectiveness rather than the theoretical figure.

Pregnancy

The clinical care looks much the same everywhere. What differs completely is who pays for it and how long you can stop working.

Abortion

Between the legal time limit and actual access there is always a gap. That gap decides more than the statute does.

Assisted reproduction

One couple in six has difficulty conceiving. Medicine has answered for forty years with a handful of well-identified techniques — everything else is eligibility, waiting, money and law, and…

Page checked in September 2026. The instruments cited can change: if in doubt, confirm with the official source given.

Why these five pages sit together

Because they concern the same people at different moments. First you try to avoid a pregnancy, then to achieve one, and sometimes you have to end one in between. Treating these subjects separately gives a false impression: that of distinct populations, when it is a single trajectory.

What these pages have in common

Each of them rests on an effectiveness figure or a time limit, and both change completely from one country to the next — the age of access without parental consent, what is reimbursed, the legal limit for a termination, eligibility for assisted reproduction. The general page says what is true everywhere; the country page says what applies where you live. Never read one without the other when a deadline is involved.

One useful marker to begin with: the effectiveness printed on a leaflet is perfect-use effectiveness. The figure that matters is typical use, missed doses included, and the gap between the two reaches a factor of twenty for some methods.

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