Health & Fitness: Packing Protection in a Purse

For years sexually active women have taken on the primary responsibility for contraception, mainly by using birth-control pills, diaphragms or IUDs. Now increasing numbers of women are also stocking up on the old-fashioned male condom, both to avoid pregnancy and to protect themselves against rampant sexually transmitted diseases, particularly chlamydia, herpes and AIDS. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research organization based in Manhattan, reports in a new study that the number of unmarried women making use of condoms almost doubled between 1982 and 1987 to 2.2 million, or about 16% of the sexually active, fertile female population. Says Helen Fairman,...