CDC on women drinking alcohol - MERGED

[louisa05]

21 hours ago, 19 cats and counting said:

@Mrsaztx according to a former friend, a condom is not real birth control and I'm not taking responsibility for my actions.  I know that's bullshit but I still have that image in my head.   In her mind, the only forms of birth control are hormonal or IUD and she openly tells random people to get an IUD.  (She once told a mother of a toddler having a meltdown in Target to go on birth control).  

I like the concept of an IUD, but after battling infections from earrings, no way do I want metal inserted into that region.

I've ran into that attitude before as well. It usually comes from women who are concerned about The Pill as a political/feminist issue. Apparently, the best way to protect access is for all of us to use it. 

I won't even try hormonal birth control. My body cannot handle any medication. I have a list of drug allergies/adverse reactions a mile long. I am not going to take anything that I do not need to take, especially for the sake of a political point. 

[AmazonGrace]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3898922/

Here is an article in which a planned/ambivalent/unplanned pregnancy is defined using London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (LMUP) scores

I suppose the matter is further complicated if you ask planned by whom, and if both partners are agreed. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21465725

Quote

The planning status of births is estimated using nationally representative and small-scale surveys of 80 countries. Of the 208 million pregnancies that occurred in 2008, we estimate that 41 percent were unintended. The unintended pregnancy rate fell by 29 percent in developed regions and by 20 percent in developing regions. The highest unintended pregnancy rates were found for Eastern and Middle Africa and the lowest for Southern and Western Europe and Eastern Asia. North America is the only region in which overall and unintended pregnancy rates have not decline

 

 

 

[browncoatslytherin]

4 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3898922/

Here is an article in which a planned/ambivalent/unplanned pregnancy is defined using London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (LMUP) scores

I suppose the matter is further complicated if you ask planned by whom, and if both partners are agreed. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21465725

 

 

 

hmm, that's an interesting article. i guess mine would be "ambivalent", then? that sounds like such a cold term, but then again, medical and technical, research-y terms can be that way.

 

if the stats the cdc used included all of that in their research, then i think that would be better indicative of the issues presented re: education, b/c (including condoms and diaphragms!), etc.

[roddma]

I don't think the problem is so much talking about the risk of FAS as it is CDC saying alcohol puts a female at the risk of violence and STDs. It's kind of like the victim blaming-shaming thing with Fundies and modesty and women are responsible for men's actions always. This explains well.
http://time.com/4209491/cdc-alcohol-pregnancy/

[AmazonGrace]

43 minutes ago, roddma said:

I don't think the problem is so much talking about the risk of FAS as it is CDC saying alcohol puts a female at the risk of violence and STDs. It's kind of like the victim blaming-shaming thing with Fundies and modesty and women are responsible for men's actions always. This explains well.
http://time.com/4209491/cdc-alcohol-pregnancy/

BBM I don't think so.

I understand that she's personally upset that she was made to feel guilty that she drank a lot around or after conception.

But this bit is BS:

 

Quote

This one recommendation is only the tip of the iceberg of problems with the CDC’s new guidelines. In an infographic, they state clearly up top that drinking too much alcohol puts women at risk for increased violence, sexually transmitted diseases, and unintended pregnancy. This is patently untrue. It is a blanket statement that stretches over a river of decisions that must be made by two people, not one. Unless alcohol grows arms and attacks a woman, or grows genitals and has sex with her, alcohol does not beat or impregnate women. Men do. These recommendations are another drop in the reservoir of blaming the victim and putting the onus of pregnancy on the woman’s shoulders. Getting unintentionally pregnant is not solely a woman’s fault.

There is a lot of scientific data that shows that alcohol puts people at risk for a whole damn lot of bad stuff. Maybe it's not a truth that she likes but it's true nonetheless. Of course she's right that it's not true that alcohol impregnates or beats people but it's just a strawman she put up to beat it up. The CDC never said that alcohol beats people or impregnates them or that it's all your fault if it happens.  When people say that X puts you at increased risk of Y happening, it simply means that thing Y tends to happen more often when X. 

It does not mean that it's your fault if X.  Well, sometimes it might be.  If you beat people up (X)  you're more at risk for going to jail (Y), and I'd say it's your fault. But the risk figures itself do not  such value judgements. The male or female gender puts you  at increased risk for some diseases or events but no  one is going to say it's your fault for being male, or female.

However, if we've made a value judgement that we don't like Y and want it to happen less, then from a public policy perspective, and from our personal preferences perspective,  it's perhaps worth considering if we could decrease the rates of Y somewhat by reducing X. 

Saying that alcohol puts me more at risk for crime does not mean that it's not the criminal's fault if he or she decides to attack me. Of course it is. They are responsible for their own decisions. But I'm concerned for my own safety more than their moral battles, so to me the increased risk  of becoming a victim iis nevertheless  something worth considering, so I can make an informed decision whether it's worth the risk  for me to drink myself in a defenseless state in the company I'm in.

It is  a fact of life that more bad things happen to people who have diminished capacity to make good decisions. Alcohol causes diminished capacity. If you're drunk  or hang out with other people who are drunk you may be more  likely to make bad decisions. Bad decisions may directly or indirectly be a factor in bad things happening to you. I don't understand why it's threatening to say the goddamn obvious truth out loud. Anyone can see it with their own two eyes around them.

Every week there are lots of crime stories that had alcohol or drugs involved, and probably wouldn't have happened if everyone was sober. Everyone knows people who hurt themselves or someone else accidentally because they were drunk.  Car accidents. People getting hypothermia in the snow. Health trouble getting worse because people drink too much. People forgetting condoms because they were drunk and who cares when you're drunk. People sleeping with people they don't find attractive while sober. People getting in fights while drunk.

Italics: And women. Women beat women, men beat women, men beat men, women beat men.

Alcohol increases the risk of violence for everybody. 

 If there is a problem with the recommendations it's that they are focusing solely on women and forgot men. Men don't get pregnant  but most of of these risks are true for men as well as women.  The men's  risk  of being a victim of a sexual or violent assault is bigger when drunk. They get STDs too. They are more careless with contraception and get hit with child support bills for babies they didn't want. They get health problems for drinking . Their children suffer in various ways because daddy drinks.

Maybe there is another leaflet coming that stresses the risks for men.

But the increased risks are real, whether we like it or not, politically.

 

Alcohol makes people more stupid and stupid people are more at risk of shit happening.

[Coconut Flan]

The CDC document that I found that quotes the 50% rate uses a definition of an intended pregnancy as one occurring at the time the mother planned. 

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr055.pdf

 

[roddma]

Anyhow, regardless if CDC meant well, they still made it sound like women don't have enough intelligence to make sound choices. They could have said excessive alcohol is bad for everyone and to be extra careful when TTC, since it can also impact sperm quality. While there's no conclusive evidence on sperm quality and alcohol, it is better being safe.

http://www.fertilityfactor.com/alcohol-sperm.html.

It's kind of like the Pill causes miscarriage controversy. Im sure most women would be smart enough to stop taking it if they did find themselves pregnant while on it.

[older than allosaurs]

I don't know. It's likely that the percentage of women who were figuring it was fine to drink while at risk for pregnancy, and then changed their minds when they read a CDC bulletin, is small. At least I'm guessing most of the folks who bother to read CDC guidelines are already well enough informed to know the well-publicized risks of alcohol to a fetus.

On the other hand, I don't much like the scenario that goes: Oh gee, your child is on the FASD spectrum; we would have told you that was a danger but we didn't we didn't want to insult your intelligence. What's the point of that?

I have a friend who conceived her son, now in his 40s, during a wild-partying stage in her life, years before the FASD was identified. He wasn't planned for, but he wasn't unwanted, and had she known the risks I believer her that she would have stayed sober.  His life has mostly been a misery to himself and pretty much everyone associated with him. If a government nanny lecture, however condescending it might feel, would have saved him, I'd call it worth the discomfort.