It appears the pill that sparked the sexual revolution may have done its dash, with Australian family planning clinics pushing for a move to longer-term contraceptives.

Experts claim the uptake of long-acting contraceptives, or LARCs, has remained low in Australia because too many GPs prefer to offer patients the pill. Family planning clinic representatives say long-acting methods do a much better job of reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortion rates.

Contraceptives such as implants and IUD’s need to be more widely recommended by the medical community, according to Penny Steel from the Northern Territory's Family Planning Welfare Association.

“They have virtually no serious side-effects and the fact is that you can put them in and forget about it,” she said.

She says LARCs could reduce the need for abortions in some situations, and are generally a better option for people in remote communities.

“No one wants to have to provide an abortion for someone because it's such a traumatic experience for the patient... errors happen because we're human so we need to be able to [fix] the errors safely... but much better to avoid them.”

“The [contraceptives] that you can put in place that you can leave for years, we often use them for the people who actually don't need fantastic contraception, and indeed the ones who need the great contraception use the much less safe methods.”

One of the safest, most effective, and reversible contraceptive methods exists for men, called RISUG, but it has seen virtually no uptake outside of India.

The simple process takes minutes to complete, can stop sperm production for up to ten years and can be reversed with an equally quick and easy method.