Persuasive Speech On Alcohol Consumption During Pregnancy

I know it can be a very tough topic to talk about but I hope I can help you to to make the right decisions during your pregnancy. Not drinking alcohol while you are pregnant is probably the most important thing you can do to help make sure your baby is born healthy and happy. Quitting alcohol consumption can be difficult without the added struggle of pregnancy, so I want you to know that I am here to help if you need it. I hope this letter can explain the negative consequences of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and convince you to ask for help if you need it. I am going to start by explaining what can happen to your baby if he develops Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. WebMD describes a long list of symptoms that are attributed to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The …show more content…
Beth A. Bailey, professor at East Tennessee University did a study on alcohol consumption during pregnancy that addressed many of the risk aspects of spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, pre-term birth and sudden infant death syndrome. Spontaneous abortion is defined as when the baby dies in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Several different studies cited showed slightly different results of the amount of alcohol necessary to create a correlation to spontaneous abortion. An example of this correlation that has been seen is that three drinks daily increase your risk of spontaneous abortion by three times. Another study discussed here showed that five or more drinks per week resulted in a five times increase in spontaneous abortions. The next part of this article discussed stillbirths, which are defined as the baby dying after 20 weeks of pregnancy. This sections tells us that a study of over 600,000 human births showed that any amount of alcohol consumption increased the stillbirth likelyhood by 40%. Preterm births and sudden infant death syndrome are the last topics discussed and they are defined as delivery of the baby in less than 37 weeks and the sudden unexplained death of a baby less than 1 month old, respectively. The studies listed on these topics have mixed results as some have shown a link to alcohol …show more content…
Phillip A. Mays, professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health examined many factors of alcohol consumption 's effects on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome such as quantity, frequency, and timing. The most dangerous form of drinking that this survey suggests is binge drinking. By comparing the ratio of more severe Fetal Alcohol Syndrome cases to those of less severity we see that binge drinking is the highest contributing factor leading to a higher severity. The other factors such as increasing quantity and frequency have been shown to increase the likelyhood of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome occuring as well. The article concludes by stating the US Surgeon General 's reccomendation on alcohol consumption during pregnancy “We do not know what, if any, amount of alcohol is safe. But we do know that the risk of a baby being born with any of the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders increases with the amount of alcohol a pregnant woman drinks, as does the likely severity of the condition. And when a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, so does her baby. Therefore, it is in the child’s best interest for a pregnant woman to simply not drink alcohol" (Mays