+

Not on birth control? The CDC wants you to stop drinking. Here's what I think.

Concerned about the number of babies born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, the Centers for Disease Control has made quite the recommendation.

Health officials at the government agency on Feb. 2, 2016, suggested that all women of child-bearing age who are sexually active and not using birth control should ... wait for it ... avoid drinking alcohol altogether.


No birth control, no more Wine Wednesdays for you, says the CDC. Photo by iStock.

The CDC provided a handy infographic for health care providers, wherein they suggest that "[p]roviders can help women avoid drinking too much, including avoiding alcohol during pregnancy, in 5 steps."

Seems legit. But then step #3 is a little disconcerting (emphasis added):

"Advise a woman to stop drinking if she is trying to get pregnant or not using birth control with sex."

Hmmmm.

Yep, you read that correctly. If you're a woman who's having sex, who's capable of reproducing, and who's not using contraception, the CDC suggests your health care provider advise you to quit drinking alcohol completely.

At first, I thought maybe they just weren't being very clear. Maybe they were talking about women who are trying to become pregnant AND not using contraception. But, alas, no.

“Alcohol can permanently harm a developing baby before a woman knows she is pregnant,” principal deputy director of the CDC Anne Schuchat said, according to USA Today. “About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, and even if planned, most women won’t know they are pregnant for the first month or so, when they might still be drinking."

She continued, "The risk is real. Why take the chance?”

Let's break this down.

Late in 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics took the definitive stance that absolutely no amount of alcohol during pregnancy is safe for a developing fetus.

For years, there's been a lot of debate about how much, if any, alcohol an expectant mother can consume before she should worry that her baby could be born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

The CDC says FASD affects up to 1 in 20 U.S. schoolchildren and can result in many physical issues, such as: "low birth weight and growth; problems with heart, kidneys, and other organs; and damage to parts of the brain." Those problems can cause behavioral and intellectual disabilities, which in turn can cause problems with "school and social skills; living independently; mental health; substance use; keeping a job; and trouble with the law."

Photo by iStock.

FASD is a serious condition, no question.

While some are still skeptical that even small amounts of alcohol are dangerous, the AAP published a clinical report in the November issue of Pediatrics, and the abstract contained the group's clear-cut stance:

"During pregnancy:
— no amount of alcohol intake should be considered safe;
— there is no safe trimester to drink alcohol;
— all forms of alcohol, such as beer, wine, and liquor, pose similar risk; and
— binge drinking poses dose-related risk to the developing fetus."




According to the CDC, planned pregnancies apparently make up half of all pregnancies each year in the U.S. So based on that info from the AAP, the CDC's recommendation that women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant abstain from alcohol is logical. They included women trying to become pregnant because, according to health officials, even planned pregnancies often remain unknown until a woman is four to six weeks along.

But the way the CDC wants to address potential FASD in the other half of pregnancies — the unintended ones —is where things veer off course.

To be fair, step #2 on the info graphic for health care providers instructs them to:

"Recommend birth control if a woman is having sex (if appropriate), not planning to get pregnant, and is drinking alcohol."

But for health officials to jump from that to step #3, which is essentially saying "no more alcohol for you, the end!" is a just a tiiiiiiny bit paternalistic.


No, CDC. No. GIF via "The Matrix."

And it's problematic.

First, it's still difficult for some women to access birth control. What if instead of telling women to use birth control or give up alcohol forever — or at least until menopause — the government made absolutely certain that all women have easy, free access to birth control?

Second, why are we not more concerned with the fact that half of women who become pregnant each year do so unintentionally? That seems like the actual problem that needs addressing, not that women are going around being adults and having a glass of wine or a few cocktails in the course of, you know, living their lives.

Third, where's the recommendation and handy infographic for men about their contribution to unintended pregnancies (and potential FASD in the babies that result from those unintended pregnancies)? After all, if men were using condoms correctly 100% of the time they engaged in sex, that should reduce the number of unintended pregnancies drastically, thereby reducing the instances of FASD. Women who are not using birth control while consuming alcohol would be far more unlikely to become pregnant in the first place if their partners were using condoms.

I'd venture to guess that most people care about healthy babies.

But in the course of trying to protect potential future babies that don't yet exist, the CDC missed an opportunity to address the real problems: Women need easy, affordable (or free) access to birth control, men need to take responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and, again, why don't we care more about the number of unintended pregnancies that occur each year in the first place? The bottom line: Telling adult women they shouldn't drink alcohol isn't a solution to any of these problems.

Sponsored

ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

True

If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

Keep ReadingShow less

Karlie Smith shows the meal she's bringing to the restaurant for her son.

A mom who admitted she packs her 2-year-old a meal when they go out to dinner has started an interesting debate on TikTok about restaurant etiquette and how it applies to young children.

The video posted by Ohio mom, Karlie Smith (unbreakablemomma on TikTok), has received nearly 600,000 views and has over 1,850 comments.

“Call me cheap, call me whatever, but if we’re going out to a restaurant, I’m packing my kid a meal," Smith, 21, said in her post. "I do this for many reasons. On Friday nights, my family and I get together, and tonight, we’re getting food out. My son is not getting food out.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
Keep ReadingShow less
@Steve_Perrault/Twitter

Some moments never get old.

On November 19, 1999, a man named John Carpenter made game show history and quite possibly gave us all the greatest game show moment of all time.

Carpenter was a contestant on the very first season of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” shot in America. Hosted by the late Regis Philbin, the quiz show featured three "lifeline" options to help them with difficult questions, the most popular being able to “Phone-a-Friend.”

Carpenter had impressively not used a single lifeline for any of his questions. That is, until question 15. The million-dollar question, to be exact.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

On a beautiful May day, friends and family gathered in the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Community, where Fideli is a resident, to witness the ceremony.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

12-year-old Texas girl saves her family from carbon monoxide poisoning

She knew something was wrong with her mom and brother, which wound up saving her whole family.

Fort Worth 12-year-old helps save family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide is called a silent killer for a reason. Many people don't realize they're experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning before it's too late. The gas is colorless and odorless and tends to have a sedating effect that causes people to sleep through the fatal poisoning. Having carbon monoxide detectors is one of the most effective ways to identify the gas before it's too late to get out of the house, but not every home has one.

A little girl in Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a terrifying encounter with the deadly gas, but her quick actions saved her entire family. Jaziyah Parker is being held up as a hero after she realized something was wrong with her family members and called for help.

The girl called 911 after she noticed her mom pass out. On the call with the dispatcher, Jaziyah says she thinks her mother has died before explaining that there was something now wrong with her baby brother, who was just 5-months-old.

Keep ReadingShow less

Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Barrymore has consistently starred in hit films and movies that are rewatchable cable-TV staples, such as “Charlie's Angels” (2000), “Never Been Kissed” (1999), “Scream” (1996), “The Wedding Singer” (1998), “50 First Dates” (2004) and “Fever Pitch” (2005).

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS. So far, the show has been a big success, attracting an average of 1.21 million views per show, and ranks as the #4 talk show in syndication. It was recently renewed through the 2024 season.

Keep ReadingShow less