There's a risk of unexpected negative reactions with any new medication, and the same held true in the 1960s for side effects of birth control pills. The occasional feeling of nausea or instance of blurred vision or weight gain were par for the course, but it was the few instances of strokes and blood clots that began to ring some alarm bells. This great new innovation to help women prevent pregnancy was not much use if it started harming the women it was supposed to help.

Contraception methods have come a long, long way. Some form of condom had existed for a long time, and when the diaphragm was developed, it provided women at least some means of controlling whether or not they got pregnant.

You may feel like you can take any of the different types of birth control so you have no particular preference as you decide on which one to use. If that's the case, then the factor that might tip the scale toward a particular choice could be the failure rate of the product. No method of pregnancy prevention is perfect, and there are instances of failure, even if many are quite low.