Alcohol Culture
(IN PHOTO) Chris Ewing (L) plays beer pong with Tom Brady (C) and Colin Anderson during spring break festivities in Panama City Beach, Florida March 12, 2015. Unwilling to evict spring break, a crucial season in a community where tourism brings in more than $1 billion annually, the city has passed new rules to counter the worst excesses. Bars must stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m. in March, two hours earlier than before. Partygoers must have a valid ID to drink on the beach, and the practice of digging deep holes in the sand for drinking games and sex is banned. Picture taken March 12, 2015. Reuters

Because of the growing number of women of child-bearing age who continue to drink even if they had stopped taking contraception bills, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended for these women to be sober. That’s because if they become pregnant and continue to drink, they could be placing their babies at risk.

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The CDC says that continuing to drink could result in the newborn having fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). The disorders cover a wide range of physical, intellectual and behavioural disabilities. It stressed that it should be zero drinking for pregnant women because there is “no known amount of alcohol that’s safe to consume while pregnant.”

Since almost half of pregnancies in the US are unplanned, a woman could unknowingly permanently harm the development of her baby without her knowing it by drinking alcohol, says Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of CDC. The risk is also there for planned pregnancies because women do not know they are on the family way during the first month.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in a warning issued in 2015, points out that the odds for an unborn to develop FASD goes up 12 times if the mother drinks during the first trimester when compared to a pregnant woman who does not drink at all. The risk arises from the foetus no developing liver until the later stages of pregnancy.

The CDC and the AAP, though, are aware of the criticism over its advice for shaming occasional drinkers as well questions if moderate drinking during the later stages in pregnancy could also be harmful. But while the two could only advice or suggest, a senator in Alaska pushed for women who enter bars and order drinks to undergo first pregnancy tests, reports Jezebel.

State Sen Pete Kelly, in 2014, made the proposal to the Alaska Senate, saying, “If you think you can take birth control and then binge drink and hope not to produce a fetal alcohol syndrome baby, you may be very wrong.” However, another Alaska senator, Berta Gardner, asked for correction of the House records that birth control is for the prevention of pregnancy and not FASD.

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