House of Assembly Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3) 51 3 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Grievance Debate Pregnancy, Alcohol Consumption PREGNANCY, ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION The Hon. L. STEVENS House of Assembly Little Para The Hon. L. STEVENS (Little Para) (16:07): On 1 November 2008 Fiona MacRae wrote an article in The Advertiser headed, 'Babies better from glass or two mums'. The article begins: Pregnant women who have a glass or two of wine a week have brighter, better-behaved babies, research suggests. The article goes on to describe the results of one study done by University College London involving more than 12,000 children born between 2000 and 2002, purporting to show that mothers who drank one or two units a week of alcohol did not increase the risk of having babies with mental impairment or behavioural problems. It states: Three year old boys whose mothers drank lightly in pregnancy were less likely to be hyperactive and threw fewer tantrums than those born to women who stayed off alcohol. Fiona MacRae writes: Similarly, girls whose mothers drank up to two units a week when carrying them had fewer emotional problems. The advantages related to light drinking only...In general, the brightest, best behaved children belong to the light drinkers, the study said. The article goes on to state: But researcher Yvonne Kelly said the apparent benefits of being exposed to small amounts of alcohol in the womb may not actually have had anything to do with drinking. Instead, the phenomenon might be due to the fact that women who drank a little in pregnancy tended to be better educated and wealthier than those who drank heavily or not at all. The article then went on to quote Dr Peter Ford, the State President of the Australian Medical Association in South Australia, who said there was no established safe level of consumption for pregnant women or breast-feeding mothers. He said: Studies have shown that even moderate drinking can reduce adult brain volume. Indeed, he is correct. I did some work and found another article by John S. Whitehall in the Medical Journal of Australia 2007. He states: The effects on cognition, learning, behaviour and executive function of human brains exposed to these levels of alcohol have been difficult to quantify because of various confounders, and because of the imprecision of psychological measurement. Nevertheless, a number of longitudinal studies have been conducted in North America. One in Detroit suggested a threshold for foetal toxicity of 0.014% blood alcohol. One in Ottawa found no deficits in language comprehension or attentional problems at doses less than 8.8 g of alcohol a day. One detected no effects on intelligence in 4-year-olds but another found exposure to as little as one drink a week caused children to be three times more likely to have 'delinquent behaviour scores in the clinical range compared with non-exposed children.' A long-running study in Seattle has reported adverse neurobehavioural effects at various ages after moderate prenatal exposure to alcohol, while a review of literature by another centre found the results inconsistent. The point of all this is that it is quite clear that there does not exist a body of evidence that shows any safe level of alcohol intake to be appropriate during pregnancy. My point is that the article in The Advertiser missed out on putting that whole other side of the question. Instead of going forward with that particular heading—saying that it was safe and even inviting readers, after having read that very biased article, to say whether they thought mothers should drink or not drink during pregnancy—it would have been more appropriate for The Advertiser to have given a balanced view and to have put all the facts on the table. It is really important for pregnant mothers and the community at large to be given consistent and accurate messages, and that is why the health department here in South Australia takes a precautionary approach and makes it quite clear that there is no body of evidence that shows a safe level of alcohol intake during pregnancy and that abstinence is the only advice that can be given to pregnant women.