Screening all women of childbearing age and those who are pregnantregarding their alcohol consumption is a practical process to identify women atrisk for maternal drinking for earlier recognition of potentially exposedfetuses and to diagnose FASD sooner. This can result in a reduction of primaryFASD disabilities as well as secondary disabilities often related to FASD in theabsence of diagnosis. This installment of Law and the Public’s Health examines the relationship between the CDC recommendations and law. Of particular note are states whose is it safe to drink alcohol while pregnant reporting laws, some of which mandate reporting, entail the provision of information to public health or law enforcement agencies on women’s behavior during pregnancy, including the use of alcohol or drugs.
Making Sense of Advice About Drinking During Pregnancy: Does Evidence Even Matter?
Most of the time, patients just want to know it’s OK to have a glass of wine to celebrate a special occasion. To reduce the risk of miscarriage, women who are trying to conceive should consider avoiding alcohol. For those unwilling to do that or those with an unplanned pregnancy, stopping drinking as soon as a pregnancy test is positive may improve the likelihood of successful outcomes. Women make decisions about risks and outcomes for our health and the health of our children all the time.
Alcohol and Pregnancy: CDC’s Health Advice and the Legal Rights of Pregnant Women
Some women may even contemplate terminating a wanted pregnancy because they had a drink or two before realizing they were pregnant. Second, we run the risk of inducing message fatigue in women—when people are bombarded with endless health warnings, they may disengage or disregard all of them—especially when such messages are not grounded in evidence. We saw this reaction in the https://ecosoberhouse.com/ backlash to the CDC’s recent warning—which was widely criticized, parodied, and pilloried on social media.
Recognization and Screening
This study also reinforces the importance of routinely screening women of reproductive age for alcohol use, and providing intervention before pregnancy. Health care professionals need to advise women who want to become pregnant and have discontinued contraception to stop drinking alcohol. These efforts might facilitate progress toward the Healthy People 2020 objective to increase alcohol abstinence among pregnant women from 89.4% to 98.3% (14). This is of concern because among women who consume alcohol during thepregnancy, the majority continues to drink throughout their lactation period. Previous studies have shown that even low levels of prenatal alcoholexposure can negatively affect the developing fetus81–84 and the earlier in pregnancy women can stop drinking,the better the outcome85;thus, there is increasing importance to identify women who drink duringpregnancy.
- © 2021 International Alliance for Responsible DrinkingIARD’s members and the members of its Partnership Council are a diverse group of organizations with a variety of viewpoints.
- Women deserve evidence-based information, not shaming and blaming, to guide their choices before, during, and after pregnancy.
- Drinking alcohol, while widely a socially accepted practice, has come under more recent scrutiny, with health experts debating the degree of harm it causes for anyone who chooses to drink any amount.
Although preconception alcoholcessation is preferred, this recommendation is unavailable to at least 30% to 50% ofwomen whom pregnancies are unplanned.10 Pregnancy is a unique Sober living house time when women are motivated to adopthealthy behaviors that may potentially benefit their child. Knowing that fetalalcohol exposure is the most common nongenetic cause of cognitive impairment, it iscritical to identify maternal alcohol consumption early as a primary target toprevent downstream FASD. Therefore, innovative research studies are vital to betterunderstand the mechanism of alcohol on pregnancy to then target the development oftherapeutic strategies to mitigate its adverse effects and improve maternal andfetal outcomes. The USPSTF recommends using evidence-based brief screening tools to assess adults, including pregnant patients, for excessive alcohol use (8).
- Second, we should remember that almost all women are highly motivated to protect the developing fetus—indeed, in our society, we observe women going to great lengths to have safe and healthy pregnancies (Lyerly et al., 2007).
- Refraining from drinking at all during pregnancy may be an easy choice for some women, but for others, especially those struggling with an alcohol use disorder, abstaining is more difficult.
- And I emphasize that stopping now that they’ve found out they’re pregnant can still improve pregnancy and fetal outcomes.
- Lifetime cost for an infant with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), a single disorder within the FASD continuum, has been estimated to be $2 million (6).
- This commentary puts the recent CDC guidelines in historical perspective and considers the unintended consequences of public health messages that extend beyond what is supported by evidence.
- However, overconsumption is linked to amultitude of serious health and social problems, including adverse events such asmotor vehicle crashes, violence, unemployment, broken relationships, and unstablehousing.
