What You Can Do…
If you are pregnant or are attempting to get pregnant please don’t drink. If you just found out you are pregnant and consumed alcohol during this time – DON’T PANIC! Talk to your medical professional. Recent research has found that small quantities of alcohol during the first semester did not produce serious problems. However, the safest course is to NOT DRINK if you plan to get pregnant,and to stop drinking as soon as you learn of your pregnancy. Your baby deserves the very best start at life that you can give him or her.
If you know of someone who is pregnant and is consuming alcohol advise them of the risks of alcohol consumption during pregnancy or print this page and give it to them.
Take Action:
- Write to or lobby your politicians on a local, provincial and national basis. Use our letter template to get this effort started. Insist that the same amount of emphasis must be placed on FAS as has been placed on the drinking and driving campaigns. A portion of liquor tax revenue must be put into education and prevention programs.
- Write to or lobby the major liquor companies and encourage them to fund education, research and prevention programs. Use our letter template to get this effort started. Beer and liquor companies fund responsible drinking campaigns but they should be allocating significant dollars to educating women about the dangers of alcohol to the unborn child. Also mandatory labels should be placed on all alcoholic beverages sold in Canada. Remind your politicians that FAS and FAE does far more then effect the one unfortunate child born with the condition. The effect is on all levels of society. In harsh dollar and cent terms – we all pay for these effects eventually.
- Start a letter writing or e-mail campaign. Organize your community group, church members, school to start a letter writing campaign to politicians and corporate heads to start addressing this problem and start funding education and prevention programs. Use our letter template to get this effort started.
- Join a membership group such as Clean-Water and become part of a worldwide effort to prevent FAS. If we all play a role, we CAN make a difference.
- If you are doing research or are looking for addtional information on this topic, please click through the links below.
