CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

CDC to women: No birth control? No drinking

San Diego Union-Tribune (CA) - 2/5/2016

Feb. 05--The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created quite a stir with its new recommendation Tuesday, calling on women of childbearing age to stop drinking unless they were on birth control.

The report says that 3.3 million U.S. women, or 7.3 percent, were at risk for having a child with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. These disorders are associated with a series of developmental and intellectual disabilities, and occur in 1 of every 3,334 births.

The broad language of the report drew some criticism from women who didn't think they were at risk. As Women's Health put it, "Is it just us, or is this a little bit ...extreme?"

The CDC defined "at risk" as a woman who, in the past six months, had sex with a man and drank any alcohol while not using any contraception.

In California, 49.3 percent of women reported drinking alcohol in the past six months, and 16.4 percent drank more than 4 drinks at one occasion -- enough for it to count as binge drinking.

California was in the bottom half of states, close to Virginia and Kansas, according to the CDC report. North Dakota had the most women who drink and Utah had the least. The report noted that even the teetotaling states had significant proportions of binge drinkers.

Northern states, particularly in New England and the Upper Midwest, had the highest amount of drinking.

About one in ten pregnant women reported drinking while being pregnant. The group most likely to do so were between the ages of 35 and 44, college graduates and were not married.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders are a series of conditions that affect infants whose mothers drank while pregnant. It is diagnosed by looking at facial features, the child's size and central nervous system problems.

* Abnormal facial features

* small head size

* poor coordination

* difficulty with focus, problem solving

The CDC estimates that the total costs of FAS are about $4 billion per year. But the human cost is very real as well.

___

(c)2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.