Telling Pregnant Women To Abstain From Alcohol “Unethical?”

A new article in the Journal of Medical Ethics suggests that given the lack of conclusive eveidence that light to moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy poses any harm to a fetus, telling expectant women to completely abstain from drinking is unethical behaviour on the part of doctors.

I thought the label of “unethical” was intriguing. The brief summary of the article I read didn’t say in great detail why, but that such advice to women is “paternalistic.” I suppose it could well be, especially if women are not given the full information about drinking during pregnancy and what it does and doesn’t do to a foetus.

I’ve been skeptical for a long time about the not-a single-drop-while-pregnant alcohol policy our culture seems to take for granted. I had heard about the skewed studies that discovered fetal alcohol syndrome, and how huge amounts of alcohol, consumed in addictive binges, were studied, and their effects universalised to include any alcohol consumption at all. I had known women who drank lightly during pregnancy whose babies were just fine.

But calling the advice downright unethical? I think most doctors, in the absence of better information, are most probably just advising women to avoid drinking to stay on the safe side of the mystery. I doubt many of them genuinely think their patients are incapable of finding the line between light-to-moderate drinking and alcoholic bingeing on moonshine. (Those early FAS studies were done on poor women in Appalachia.)

But I’ve never been pregnant, on the receiving end of the doctor’s advice. What do you think? Did you OB/Gyn mention drinking during pregnancy? If so what did s/he tell you and how did you feel about it? Was it any more a problem than any of the other advice you were given? Does it seem unethical?

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