On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a statement discouraging woman from drinking any amount of alcohol at all unless they are on birth control. Why? Just in case the woman is pregnant and doesn’t know it or that she may become pregnant and give her baby fetal alcohol syndrome.
I know a lot about pregnancy and birth, but I had no idea that alcohol consumption could make a baby! Who knew it was that easy to get pregnant! I certainly never learn that in my sex-ed classes in school!
According to their statement, consuming alcohol, even before a woman knows she is pregnant, can have lasting effects on a child. So the solution, of course, is to discourage all those with vaginas from drinking any amount of alcohol because apparently that bottle of wine is going to impregnate you, so watch out!
Even if the recommended restriction was just made for women trying to conceive, it is unrealistic because it can take 6 months, a year, or longer to even get pregnant.
Obviously the real answer here is to raise the legal drinking age to 50, but for women only because we can’t be trusted to make decisions for ourselves or our potential hypothetical babies.
If people follow the advice of the CDC’s new statement, I see one of two things happening.
Liquor stores will go out of business due to the lack of women buying wine, thereby causing wineries to also go out of business.
The birth control market will boom. Option two is not good for a doula because in order to keep our jobs, people need to keep having babies.
Great idea or a little excessive? We want to know what you think about this new recommendation! Let us know in the comments section below.