Public health groups protest posters suggesting that women can drink while pregnant, reports Daniel Victor.
On posters distributed to medical facilities across Australia, large type over an image of a pregnant woman read: “It’s safest not to drink while pregnant.”
Good so far.
It was the next line, in smaller type, that alarmed medical professionals: “It’s not known if alcohol is safe to drink when you are pregnant.”
Public health groups responded with resounding protests — drinking alcohol while pregnant is very definitively known to be unsafe, they said. Creating doubt around the science could confuse pregnant women and encourage them to ignore warnings, they feared.
The organization that made the posters, DrinkWise, describes its focus as promoting “a healthier and safer drinking culture in Australia,” but is funded largely by the alcohol industry. It withdrew the 2,400 posters after hearing complaints and substituted new text.
But concerns remained among people working to spread the message that women should stay away from alcohol while pregnant.
“It’s more than just erroneous for the alcohol industry to make that statement,” Michael Thorn, chief executive of the Foundation of Alcohol Research and Education, which is based in the Australian capital, Canberra, said in an interview. “The truth is, that’s what they want the public to believe.”
In an emailed statement, DrinkWise’s chief executive, Simon Strahan, suggested the flap was more about precise messaging than intent.
“It is clear, from the ‘It’s safest not to drink while pregnant’ headline of the posters, that the intent is to encourage abstinence when pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breast-feeding,” he said.
Strahan said DrinkWise “immediately acted upon” a complaint from the Australian Medical Association “to refine the message to avoid any potential for misinterpretation.”
“DrinkWise wants to ensure all women are aware of the risks of drinking while pregnant,” he wrote.
In the updated poster, the disputed line was replaced with: “A very important choice you can make for the health of your baby is to abstain from alcohol while pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breast-feeding.” The news was first reported by The Sydney Morning Herald.
Indeed, health organizations are virtually unanimous on the issue: Women should not drink while pregnant. Doing so can cause an array of physical and mental impairments in the child.
It is the advice from, among others: Australia’s Alcohol and Drug Foundation, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, Britain’s National Health Service, the American Pregnancy Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC faced a backlash in 2016 for recommending that sexually active women who are not on birth control remain sober in case of an unplanned pregnancy.)
While just about every public health organization agrees the best option is to not drink, there is some debate about the exact effects of drinking early in a pregnancy, or drinking small amounts throughout. Some studies have suggested the effects are minimal.
But many working in public health note that those studies are far from conclusive and they say the uncertainty should not be taken as a green light to drink.
It is an issue that advocates continue to push in Australia through public health campaigns. A study published in the Medical Journal of Australia reported that 53 percent of pregnant Australian women drank in 2007, but the number had fallen to 35 percent by 2011. In that time, the number of women who drank after the first trimester dropped to 26 percent from 42 percent.
Tony Bartone, president of the Australian Medical Association, confirmed that the group wrote a letter to DrinkWise protesting the language in the poster. He said it was “disappointing to see such misinformation got into the public space in the first place.”
“It doesn’t matter who funds it,” he said. “The messaging should still reflect the evidence-based findings.”
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