A short but ugly diary.
The CDC has today been reported to have come out with a report about women and pregnancy and beverage alcohol.
The short upshot is that alcohol can have a negative effect on any pregnancy and a resulting child in the fetal alcohol spectrum disorder zone, if alcohol is taken in any amount at any time during the pregnancy, including the time during which a woman does not yet realize she is pregnant. See www.cdc.gov/media/dpk/2016/dpk-vs-alcohol-pregnancy.html. There is at least one article on this in USA Today according to Google. if the link doesn’t work. (First diary with link under the new system- sorry in advance for mistakes if I didn’t do it right). I am not aware of prior releases from CDC which are this absolute and unqualified and zero tolerance for violation, and wide ranging, on any subject. Hence the diary.
Women can, according to the release:
- Talk with their healthcare provider about their plans for pregnancy, their alcohol use, and ways to prevent pregnancy if they are not planning to get pregnant.
- Stop drinking alcohol if they are trying to get pregnant or could get pregnant.
- Ask their partner, family, and friends to support their choice not to drink during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant.
- Ask their healthcare provider or another trusted individual about resources for help if they cannot stop drinking on their own.
Healthcare providers can:
- Screen all adult patients for alcohol use at least yearly.
- Advise women not to drink at all if there is any chance they could be pregnant.
- Counsel, refer, and follow up with patients who need more help.
- Use the correct billing codes so that alcohol screening and counseling is reimbursable.
FASDs are completely preventable if a woman does not drink alcohol during pregnancy.
The release is clear that it is written in light of the circumstance that many, many pregnancies these days are not planned and intentional, and thus may arise and be well en traine before the woman discovers she is pregnant, and that drinking before she finds out can injure any fetus already in process, whether or not she is aware she is pregnant when she drinks. And it is written in the nature of a no-exceptions ban on alcohol use save in limited protected conditions on an age-grade basis for all women.
The recommendation is that those who are of childbearing age not drink alcohol at all in any amount or of any kind, beer and wine not excepted, unless they are using birth control, and find ways to control their environment, including enlisting their companions to support their efforts not to drink while pregnant or trying to get pregnant. And perhaps not to do things which might result in pregnancy when alcohol has been or might soon be consumed. This may even include sacramental wine, although it is not mentioned specifically.
On the one hand, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is plainly a very serious risk to any fetus. CDC does not do hysterical leaps for announcements and recommendations of this kind. It wouldn’t call for this sort of social change if they didn't think it was in fact seriously necessary.
On the other hand, this is a recommendation which will have a huge effect on all women of childbearing age, especially those who might not for religious or other reasons use birth control on a regular basis, and those who are in drinking cultures or do not have physical security that is reliable and a male partner who is responsible and without an alcohol issue of his own.
It is especially severe for women in stable situations where the timing of getting pregnant is not something they do with thermometers and calendars, but accept as to children after the first when it happens, and live ordinary lives including small alcohol like beer or the odd mixed drink or wine from time to time when at a restaurant or some sort of event or affair or as part of an occasion with a trusted partner which gets happier after a bit of alcohol. A whole spectrum of feminine life from which all alcohol must now be barred unless the possibility of pregnancy is pre-eliminated.
The bottom line is that women are being told essentially not to drink, period, unless they are using effective birth control if there is the slightest risk that anything which might make them pregnant could happen, felonious or not. For many it will be a radical limitation on what they, we, have come to regard as part of our liberty as autonomous and equal creatures, though we may never have gotten drunk as lords, never ladies, outside our own homes.
There is of course, nothing in the notice about men and alcohol.
The release does not discuss what it means as birth control, but it does sound to me like IUD or more invasive or pharmaceutical, rather than rubbers or condoms is what they have in mind, given the failure rates of rubbers and condoms to protect against pregnancy.
In and of itself, this recommendation if put into practical effect, will have a huge consequence for the lives of young women, for whom an occasional beer with friends or family or at a party has not theretofore been a big deal but now is, or who drinks wine at home with meals. Or works professionally with any beverage alcohol or food served with alcohol. Teetotaling is for women no longer a preferred and not optional public form of conduct, until this.
This also sets up the enlargement of an issue beyond the jurisdiction of CDC, namely the conflict between certain religious organizations and many women about the necessity and appropriateness of the use of birth control, over against, say, abstinence as to sexual matters, a matter wholly separate until this tie made by CDC to the use of alcohol as well.
The problem of this conflict is especially serious in those cultures where the church says X and the experience of the young is Y, often accompanied by beer, no matter what the church says, and hiding is the remedy until certain matters are beyond concealment, and in this also beyond any remedy. If the no BC rule is enforced, the no alcohol rule will also have to be enforced. But at much higher risk for failure than previously.
While it is true that elimination of the use of alcohol in social settings containing women not using birth control may obviate in part the risk of certain circumstances which in past have produced unwanted pregnancies, it may also and instead shift the choice of chemical stimulation in such settings from alcohol to other sorts of pharma not within the CDC recommendations because not producing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, but equally not good for fetuses.
Also not limiting unwanted pregnancies initiated while under the influence of something other than affection alone. Ahem, Heroin and pills epidemic, now in progress. Whatever product that was that the now old comedian was accused of spreading about. And so on.
I am sure this was not intended to come out in an election year, but the problem that at once also occurred to me since women are not to be trusted with the care of fetuses they carry in the minds of a certain sort of conservative lawmaker.
I wonder, therefore, how long it will be before it becomes illegal and a crime for women to have taken a drink, after the fact of course, if it turns out that they were pregnant at the time they did it and a baby born of that pregnancy is alleged to have been affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Or a man plying a woman with drink, and then producing with her a pregnancy that same night, and the baby with FASD. Since by reason of this notice, every woman in a place where men want control is now under notice of this CDC bulletin and the negative consequences of mixing alcohol and sex.
There are already states which claim the right to investigate any act or omission which might have given rise to a miscarriage, with an eye to prosecution if the miscarriage arose either from recklessness or gross negligence, or was an intentional effort to trigger a miscarriage. Or if the mother used certain addictive recreational drugs during the pregnancy which might have had an addictive effect on the resulting baby, for child abuse of a person in utero (although it may be that states which do this for drugs already do it as well for fetal alcohol syndrome affected newborns and their mothers — I just don't know about that.). This, of course, would make the crime attach earlier, and virtually regardless of the condition of the baby actually born, if any.
Depending on the location and the circumstances, the abortion rate as a protective matter may also be affected by this, if it is possible to detect Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in utero or as a prophylactic measure on the Day After just in case. For drugs not designed to be taken regularly whenever a Day After occurs, just in case.
After those, this is one more limitation on the right of women of child- bearing age and ability to live a conventional life. made and applicable to them because they are women. And as is usual, the ones with the loads of personal discipline, at least most of the time, are not the ones most at risk. The others, the regular folk, will be having their lives rearranged still again.
This recommendation comes from the presumably religiously neutral authority of the Centers for Disease Control, and may have more suggestive power than might otherwise be the case, and be less arguable for that reason.
In my own mind, every daughter should early in her pubertal life visit PPH or its various sisters or Mom’s doctor, and this appears to be another excellent reason to do so. Making mistakes of various kinds is part of the process of growing up and maturing, but the visit is a way to limit some of the worse ones with newly clear additional horrible possible consequences. Waving the CDC release if necessary.
I invite discussion on this issue. In this I invite men to imagine what their lives would be like if this applied to them, not to the women who may be in their lives.
Look on the bright side. This is not a Hillary and Bernie diary.