Raise Your Glass To Those Who Don’t Raise Theirs
Ordering a glass of Pinot at dinner is simple enough. You order, you drink, you pay, you leave. If you happen to be a pregnant woman however…well things get a little more complicated. You order, there’s some awkward silence, some judgey glances, a reluctant pour or an embarrassing refusal.
For expecting mothers, it seems the risk of having their drink order judged and rejected has acted as a fairly strong deterrent for consuming alcohol. The effects of drinking whilst pregnant — foetal growth retardation and organ damage, just to name a couple — have, for the most part, been found to be negative, so anything that can deter pregnant women from drinking should be regarded as a good thing, right?
Not exactly.
As I delved further into research regarding serving alcohol to mothers-to-be, I encountered this idea of legality. I was surprised to find that in most instances it is actually against the law to refuse the serving of alcohol to pregnant women. Let’s take for example the pregnant women of New York City. The NYC Commission on Human Rights has introduced new, clearer guidelines indicating that refusing alcoholic beverage orders of expecting mothers denotes discrimination. It’s a similar situation in Australia, where refusal of serving alcohol is permitted only if a patron is underage or unduly intoxicated, outside of these categories a person has no legal right to refuse service. This to me was extremely confronting information, not so much because it’s legal for a mother-to-be to order a beer for herself, but because I could not (and cannot) fathom why there are women who are intent on consuming alcohol whilst pregnant!
The “it’s my body” argument represents the preeminent rationalisation for those who support a woman’s right to drink. Clementine Ford wrote an interesting summation of this view on ABC’s ‘The Drum’. Allegedly the pro-pregnant-drinking argument is similar to the pro-choice argument concerning clinical abortions; it is a woman’s decision as to what she does with her own body. However, I am of the opinion that there is no possible way that one can draw a reasonable comparison between the termination of a child and the consumption of alcohol whilst pregnant.
Although both abortion and pregnant drinking are choices that affect the life of a foetus, one is more of a choice than the other.
A woman may have an abortion due to pregnancy being the result of rape, a situation in which a woman was forced to become pregnant. Contrasting this with the act of drinking whilst pregnant, an expecting mother is in no way forced to have that glass of wine, they choose to. In another instance, pregnant women who discover their unborn child has a foetal abnormality may have an abortion to spare their innocent offspring an inevitably short or painful life. Again, a perfectly healthy foetus can be significantly affected by their mother’s choice to consume alcohol and it is by no fault but the mother’s that the infant’s life is adversely affected.
The choices of a pregnant woman do not solely affect her, they affect the child — it’s your body, but you are sharing it with your child. It is up to society to draw a clear line between what is a pregnant woman’s right and what is child abuse. In most instances I would stand with those who support a woman’s right to control what happens to her body, however this is one matter wherein I find myself on the opposing side. Whilst it has been established that it is within a pregnant woman’s legal rights to order and consume alcohol, just because you could, doesn’t mean you should.
In conjunction with the preposterous “it’s my body” argument, those who support expecting mothers’ right to consume alcohol argue that it’s fine for pregnant women to drink as long as they do so in “moderation”. Now, it is important to note that there is no definitive amount of alcohol consumption attached to the term moderation, so where moderate may be 3 glasses of wine for one woman, it could be 3 glasses of scotch for another — so, you can clearly see where that moderate drinking argument falls over. Still, supporters of pregnant drinking insist that low levels of alcohol consumption — again, no one can truly define “low levels” — do not adversely affect the health of the child, basing their argument on (very select) studies that hold little credibility when compared to the abundance of research iterating the harmful effects of alcohol on the unborn. These opposing studies pay particular attention to the mental and physical problems that can develop as a result of drinking while pregnant — these are known as Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.
FASDs are one of the most common causes of mental retardation, and although incurable, are the only cause that is 100% preventable. As it is often misdiagnosed or unreported, it is impossible to know the exact number of cases of children born with FASDs, however many governments remain concerned with the rising prevalence of alcohol-related birth defects. A 2016 meta-analysis of FASDs in Australia estimated that for every 1000 births, 10.82 infants were born with alcohol-related defects. These statistics, as well as many others, have spurred government intervention, exemplified through the creation of education campaigns. For instance, Western Australia launched the “Alcohol Think Again” campaign back in 2012, with one of the aims being to “increase women’s intentions to abstain from alcohol during pregnancy, and when breastfeeding”.
Despite the research that tells expectant mothers it’s not alright to drink whilst pregnant, despite the campaigns aimed at stopping the behaviour; the law states that the choice lies solely with the mother-to-be, not the government, and certainly not me. Although my opinion may differ from your own, it is no myth that drinking alcohol whilst pregnant can have very real consequences on the health of an unborn child. It is for this reason, and others mentioned above, that alcohol consumption during pregnancy should be illegal. There is a reason why all research into the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy premises arguments by stating that abstaining from alcohol during pregnancy is the safest option. The simple fact is: you can’t guarantee a safe pregnancy if you drink alcohol, and the sooner this fact is recognised by the law, the better.
Originally published at The Isthmus.
