Pregnant women should be aware that abstinence from all alcohol during pregnancy is a small price to pay to ensure the baby is not damaged, says letter-writer Jill Courtemanche.

Re: A drink or smoke during pregnancy shouldn't get you all puffed up, July 24.

At the Motherisk program at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, we field queries every day from pregnant women concerned about medications, drugs or illnesses that might hurt their unborn children. It says something about the nature of alcohol and its appeal that pregnant women who would balk at taking any prescribed medication, no matter how safe, will continue to drink because it cannot be proven that the amount they drink is harmful.

Alcohol is classed as a proven teratogen (an agent that causes toxic effects to a fetus), for which the threshold dose is unknown. For this teratogen, the burden of proof seems to be contrary to the norm: Prove to me that the dose is harmful before I will stop. For every person who comes down on a pregnant woman for drinking in public, there are friends and families encouraging her to "just have a drink and stop being so silly."

Yes, it probably takes a significant amount to produce, as columnist Rondi Adamson so disdainfully puts it, "slobbering handicapped basket cases." But, full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome is only the tip of the iceberg.

Most of the children and adults affected by alcohol in utero are in the middle or lower end of severity of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, as it is now known by Health Canada. But never have the implications of hidden disability been more evident.

For many, their normal stature and good looks deny any health problem. Yet they do face lifelong problems, and when they do poorly in regular classes, run away, have problems at home or encounters with the law, they are deemed to be "bad" children or to have "poor" parenting. To trivialize their disability is to do them and their families an enormous disservice.

The families we see in our fetal alcohol spectrum support group would unanimously agree that abstinence for nine months is a small price to pay for the guarantee that no more babies will be born damaged by alcohol.

Jill Courtemanche,

Ottawa,
Consultant, Ontario regional poison centre at CHEO