The pill may have the added advantages of making menstrual cycles more regular, and decreasing the sometimes painful intensity of a woman's periods, but as far as being purely a method of birth control, the pill has drawbacks, too. Besides being something that the user must remember to take each and every day regardless of the frequency of sexual activity, being on the pill involves visits to the doctor's office or to Planned Parenthood with annual or even more frequent exams and tests that may be unpleasant and cost more money. These methods, too, place all the burden of birth control on the woman. With diaphragms, many times they are not convenient at the exact moment that a woman wants to have sex. IUDs may be irritating or inconvenient to use, and they, too, require much planning ahead.
Injections also require planning ahead, and at least right now, they are extremely expensive.
I think condoms offer the best solution to the question of which method of birth control is both practical and effective. Condoms are cheap, and they are available in most every convenience store. Using condoms requires far less planning ahead than many of the other methods of birth control, and the use of condoms allows male partners to share in the responsibility of pregnancy prevention. Some people say that condoms do not statistically have the same high rate of success in pregnancy prevention that other methods do. Even the pill is not foolproof, and with the improvements in technology that are happening almost faster than we can keep up with, latex condoms over the past decade or so have become far more an effective method of birth control than they once were, when condoms were famous for being ineffective.