Warning pregnant women over dangers of alcohol goes too far, experts say

As a provincial FASD prevention campaign in Alberta, we support having non-judgemental, sensitive conversations with women about alcohol and pregnancy. Shaming or blaming women for their choices is NOT part of our prevention efforts. As there is no known safe threshold of alcohol consumption in pregnancy we recommend abstaining from all alcohol intake while pregnant and planning a pregnancy.

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Women are being unfairly alarmed by official guidelines that warn them to avoid alcohol completely during pregnancy, experts claim.

Some mothers-to-be may even be having an abortion because they are worried they have damaged their unborn child by drinking too much, it is claimed.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, maternal rights campaign group Birthrights and academics specialising in parenting say official advice on drinking in pregnancy is too prescriptive.

Revised guidelines that came into force in January 2016 are not based on reliable evidence, they say. The advice, endorsed by the four UK nations’ chief medical officers, deleted a longstanding reference to pregnant women potentially having one or two units of alcohol once or twice a week while expecting and instead said that they should not drink at all.

“We need to think hard about how risk is communicated to women on issues relating to pregnancy. There can be real consequences to overstating evidence or implying certainty when there isn’t any,” said Clare Murphy, director of external affairs at BPAS, the contraception and abortion charity.

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