Local contraception is far less effective that other methods; there are, however, millions of women who relie on it rather than other methods. Some women are afraid of the long range side effects of oral contraception; many women cannot consciously accept the idea of sex as pleasure and no risk, and many others cannot overcome the ambivalence between the desire of a child and the desire of not having one. Moreover, local contraception does not require the assistance of a doctor, whom many women resent. On the other hand local contraception requires, sooner or later, an interruption of the love play, and does certainly require a woman to manipulate or touch her own genitalia, a gesture that many women perform with considerable guilt.