Can I Get Pregnant From Oral Sex? Sexual Health Misconceptions in E-mails to a Reproductive Health Web Site

The researchers sought to identify sexual and reproductive health misconceptions contained in e-mails sent to a university emergency contraception Web site: http://ec.princeton.edu. They conducted content analysis on 1,134 English-language questions e-mailed to the Web site from July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2004.

Of the total questions sent to the Web site, 303 (27 percent) contained underlying misunderstandings about sexual and reproductive health issues. When analyzing content, investigators found five major thematic categories of mistaken beliefs: sexual acts that can lead to pregnancy; meanings of "protected" sex; timing of pregnancy and pregnancy testing; hazards of emergency contraception to women and fetuses; and confusion between emergency contraception and abortion.

"These misconceptions have several possible sources: abstinence-only education programs in the [United States], the proliferation of medically inaccurate Web sites, terminology used in public health campaigns, non-evidence based medical protocols, and confusion between emergency contraception and medication abortion in the media," the authors concluded.

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