Free pregnancy tests and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome info at Alaska bars

[gollygee]

I question whether this could be effective, since drinking one time in a bar that early in pregnancy wouldn't cause FAS.

http://www.npr.org/2015/05/10/405245842/will-pregnancy-tests-in-alaska-bars-dissuade-moms-to-be-from-drinking

Remember the last time you had sex? Were you drinking? Alcohol use during pregnancy can cause lifelong problems for the child."

That's part of the warning on a poster in the women's bathroom at the Peanut Farm bar in Anchorage. It depicts the silhouette of a pregnant woman guzzling straight from a bottle. And it's affixed to a pregnancy test dispenser hanging on the wall.

The Peanut Farm and a few other bars in Alaska have begun offering the free pregnancy tests as part of a two-year, state-funded pilot project. (Condoms are also made available, though they're not part of this project).

Alaska has a high rate of women who binge drink, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. State health officials estimate that more than 120 children born in Alaska each year suffer from fetal alcohol symptoms ranging from mental and physical disabilities to impaired growth and organ damage.

[Sunlei]

1. The current recommendation of the Surgeon General of the United States, the British Department of He

In the United States and Europe, the FAS prevalence rate is estimated to be between 0.2–2 in every 1000 live births.[9][10] FAS should not be confused with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), a condition which describes a continuum of permanent birth defects caused by maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy, which includes FAS, as well as other disorders, and which affects about 1% of live births in the US (i.e., about 10 cases per 1000 live births).


The current recommendation of the Surgeon General of the United States, the British Department of Health and the Australian Government National Health and Medical Research Council is to drink no alcohol at all during pregnancy



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome

[gollygee]

2. That doesn't mean that one night of drinking so early in the pregnancy

that you don't know you're pregnant is or can be a cause of FAS.

[LisaL]

3. How do you know it would be one night of drinking?

They could be going to that bar every night.

[gollygee]

4. Yeah but then they'd pretty quickly know they were pregnant

and know to stop. The idea here is that the short space of time between when you're pregnant and you find our you're pregnant is when you would cause FAS in a fetus. I have known children who had FAS, but their moms all drank throughout pregnancy. I've never heard of FAS from a pregnant woman only drinking a few weeks into pregnancy and then stopping when she finds out. I don't see how finding out at 6 weeks instead of 7 could make a difference. Either she'd stop when she found out a week later, or she doesn't care if she's pregnant and is going to drink regardless.

[LisaL]

5. You don't see it? Are you an expert on FAS?

"No. Alcohol can damage the fetus at any stage of pregnancy because the fetus is continually developing, even in the early weeks and before a woman knows she is pregnant. The Central Nervous System (the brain and spinal cord) develops throughout the pregnancy and therefore drinking at any time can cause damage to the baby’s brain."

http://www.nofas.org/faqs/

[yeoman6987]

6. Ok. So how can a woman stop if she doesn't know she's

Pregnant yet? Sounds impossible.

[mopinko]

7. dealing w this issue w information instead of coercion is a good thing.

but wait till the rtl'ers get ahold of it. they will probably say it would lead to women drinking, but getting abortions. which i think it could. which would be a valid choice, if you ask me. if you know you have a problem, and you know you cant make a healthy choice for your fetus, i can see that being the right choice.

treating women like grown ups=good.

[gollygee]

8. I guess you've hit my issue

There's a issue of whether women are being treated as grown ups or not. Also the whole concept of women being treated as perpetually potentially pregnant, like every thing we do is a potential crime against some potential fetus. We're vessels.

[LeftyMom]

9. One thing I always wonder about FAS:

For a lot of recorded history absolutely everybody including pregnant women and small children drank alcoholic drinks all day long because untreated water was unsafe. There's no evidence I'm aware of that FAS was a universal condition or even more common. How do we square that with what we know about FAS?

[gollygee]

10. I don't know if you even have to go back that far

I was born before that chart but it wasn't all that long ago that women regularly drank during pregnancy. My mom said that she and her friends knew they were pregnant when they couldn't hold their liquor as well. And then historically it took longer for women to be able to find out they were pregnant - the tests we have now haven't been around forever. Yet FAS rates are going up rather than down. Warning women not to drink while pregnant hasn't apparently helped, in fact FAS rates hve become worse since we started warning women not to drink while pregnant. I don't know why the next move is to warn women about alcohol earlier and earlier, rather than changing direction and doing some kind of education about alcoholism. I think alcoholism is a bigger problem as far as FAS goes than women just a few weeks into pregnancy where they don't even know they're pregnant yet going to the bar.

[drmeow]

11. Actually, the geneticists I work with

say the data indicate that drinking early is far more dangerous than drinking late in the pregnancy. The irony of wait staff refusing to serve alcohol to very visibly pregnant women is that by the time she is that visibly pregnant, on glass of wine is not going to affect the child very much. When you are going from 1 cell to 2 cells to 4 cells to 16 cells the repercussions of copying errors are substantially greater than when you get the fine detail cell division that happens in the last 2 months.

Do they have corresponding warnings and condom dispensers in men's bathrooms? "Remember the last time you had sex? Were you drinking? Alcohol use increases the likelihood of having unprotected sex which can lead to a lifetime of responsibilities for you."