To think WHO are trying to commit organisational suicide? They’ve said that women of childbearing age should not drink alcohol AT ALL.

[RickiTarr]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/16/accused-sexism-saying-women-childbearing-age-should-not-drink/

@felulageller

It's because the harm alcohol does in pregnancy (much worse than other drugs even heroin and cocaine for example) is done before a woman knows she is pregnant. It's those 2 weeks before a missed period or positive test when the damage is done.

There should be more publicity about this.

Is this right?

I’ve found this online:

Most women don't test for pregnancy until they've missed a period, which is around the time your baby's placenta will begin to form. In reality, then, any drinking you've done up to this point is unlikely to affect your baby.

Which seems to correlate with what the nhs says about it:

This can occur because alcohol in the mother's blood passes to her baby through the placenta

@felulageller

It's because the harm alcohol does in pregnancy (much worse than other drugs even heroin and cocaine for example) is done before a woman knows she is pregnant. It's those 2 weeks before a missed period or positive test when the damage is done.

There should be more publicity about this.

@felulageller are you a doctor or specialist in this area? Much of the time before a missed period the embryo hasn't even fully attached to the wall of the uterus and therefore is not getting the mother's alcohol level through a connected blood supply. Can you please cite your sources?

A person of Childbearing age MUST NOT

Eat

Pate
Mayo
Shell fish
Brie

@MarshaBradyo

I wouldn’t be surprised if this got picked up by the media

It already has.

Ha just reread op with Telegraph link 😂

@felulageller

It's because the harm alcohol does in pregnancy (much worse than other drugs even heroin and cocaine for example) is done before a woman knows she is pregnant. It's those 2 weeks before a missed period or positive test when the damage is done.

There should be more publicity about this.

If you are actively trying to conceive then surely you'd be avoiding alcohol anyway though. That's already the advice.

I'm of child bearing age but I'm not trying to conceive so I don't see why I would need to stop drinking. I use contraception and on the extremely small chance I got pregnant then I would terminate it.

I’m not usually shocked by things like this, but this ones threw me.
I know so many more men who have ruined their life with alcohol.
Why was I encouraged to take medication that can cause abnormalities in pregnancy when I wasn’t trying but I can’t sit back and have a drink or two incase an accidental pregnancy has took place?
If all women are good for is making babies between ages of like 16-50 how long before all the pro choice progress is out the window? Our bodies are ours.

So what about women who decide not to have children? Who are investing in contraception like the shot, coil or implant? Who have a medical condition meaning they are not able to get pregnant?

Do they get a certificate to show that they are allowed to drink?

It is like the anti-abortion laws in the US, a massive invasion in body automony.

Should there be more education of how alcohol affects a fetus? Yes, very much so. Women should have more access to sexual health checks in general which should include information about it.

But just deciding to ban all females to drink? Really? What next, no sugar or refined carbs because the more you weigh the more difficult a pregnancy can be?

Really unsettling that an organisation like the WHO thinks this is acceptable - truly scary stuff.

@alexdgr8

but what are the overall benefits versus risks of drinking alcohol at all, forget about the pregnancy issue. don't doctors think most people would benefit by drinking less.

Then they should recommended that no one drinks, surely?

Imagine this happened, nightclubs would be full of horny young men and 55year old plus women.

At this point the advice would be altered to 'young women, please still dress up and go out And met young men. We know that drunk people are a bit annoying if you are sober, but you will get used to it, we are only doing this for your own good.'
Followed by ' and look, as you are not drunk or vulnerable, you are not getting raped* so you should be happy about this too'.

*we know that some women get raped while sober. This is probably due to what you were wearing, or that you were out in public without a chaperone.

@NiceGerbil

And that's all about control.

Women cannot be trusted to behave themselves. They need to be controlled.

Unbelievable they have said this.

This.

It's because the harm alcohol does in pregnancy (much worse than other drugs even heroin and cocaine for example) is done before a woman knows she is pregnant.

You honestly think a woman getting drunk before she realises she is pregnant causes worse harm than a woman taking heroin, presumably throughout pregnancy because it's rather hard to stop?

Purely anecdotal, my daughter is perfectly healthy, I got drunk before realising I was pregnant. I have friends who fostered/adopted babies from heroin addicts. One couldn't cope at all, and she usually fostered babies with health issues.

Make no mistake, this line wasn't accidental and it's about controlling women.

I thought if actively trying to conceive both partners should give up alcohol as you want the sperm to be "good quality". So why is the advice only directed at women? Not to mention directed at women who have no intention of conceiving.

@felulageller

It's because the harm alcohol does in pregnancy (much worse than other drugs even heroin and cocaine for example) is done before a woman knows she is pregnant. It's those 2 weeks before a missed period or positive test when the damage is done.

There should be more publicity about this.

Do you have a citation for this? I’ve never heard that.

No woman is going to refrain from alcohol her whole reproductive life on the
off chance she gets pregnant, esp if she’s not actively trying.

And what about men and their sperm? I’m sure alcohol affects sperm production too.

I finished my child bearing at 32, but I was pretty careful about drinking while Tx and totally cut down, I didn’t sweat it if I had a glass or two of wine though.

Do they think women of child-bearing age are incapable of controlling whether they become pregnant or not?

I'm on the same page as you regarding women's agency.

To be fair, women who lack access to contraception often are incapable of controlling whether they become pregnant. None of us have complete control because of rape.

The answer is to prioritise access to contraception and tackle male violence. Not to make women mitigate for rape and poor healthcare by going teetotal!

A good start with male violence would be to prevent excess drinking in men.

Why do they also assume that all women of childbearing age are sexually active with a male partner who doesn't use contraception? If they wanted to prevent unplanned pregnancies where there could be a chance of fetal alcohol syndrome, this would be a good opportunity to encourage men to take responsibility for contraception.

A new chapter in the war on women.

Will women who question this be accused of literal violence and murder?

I'm interested to see how this plays out long term.

So why is the advice only directed at women?

Because it’s easier to blame women for men’s behaviour than confront a lot of men about their problem drinking.

@felulageller

It's because the harm alcohol does in pregnancy (much worse than other drugs even heroin and cocaine for example) is done before a woman knows she is pregnant. It's those 2 weeks before a missed period or positive test when the damage is done.

There should be more publicity about this.

That isn't correct. The foetus has a yolk sac for early nutrition and doesn't take nutrition from mother's bloodstream via the cord until 7 or 8 weeks iirc.

Unless you can find a source to correct me?

Because women are just foetus carriers and their goal should be to improve the quality of their product? Sinister and creepy, but unfortunately not surprising.

@poptartsarefood

Because women are just foetus carriers and their goal should be to improve the quality of their product? Sinister and creepy, but unfortunately not surprising.

This.

Remember women, you are just walking incubators from puberty to menopause.

So they care so much about the potential life of a child, they want to restrict women’s freedoms and control them. But, they don’t care so much about that potential life, that they would also ban men from drinking, despite the impact on sperm. Gee, how unsurprising. Stupid misogynistic pricks.

This is insane! And I say that as a pregnant woman with a very much wanted and long awaited baby!

Also it doesn't tally with my understanding of the evidence for drinking and pregnancy either - my understanding (and I have an Oxbridge science degree) is that (a) we know lots of alcohol in pregnancy = bad as it can lead to foetal alcohol syndrome (b) we don't know what the limit is where small amounts of drinking tip over into risk of FAS therefore (c) we advise pregnant women not to drink at all.

There is no evidence at all that low or moderate alcohol consumption is harmful, but we don't know what the limit is, as it is considered highly unethical to do experiments to understand where the cutoff between low/moderate and harmful lies, so the advice has been to avoid alcohol altogether.

Therefore to make a blanket statement that all women who might have a baby (and those who are just the right age...!) doesn't even make sense based on the evidence, which suggests a significant amount of alcohol is needed to cause harm, probably over an extended period of the pregnancy. The proportion of women who are heavy enough drinkers to cause FAS and don't realise they are pregnant and would even care about WHO advice is tiny, so I don't know what this is supposed to achieve either.