Drinking alcohol while pregnant can be a risky gamble. Unfortunately, it’s one that more Americans are taking, recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
CDC scientists looked at the latest data from a nationally representative survey of Americans. They found that one in every seven pregnant women reported drinking in the past month—an increase from past years—while some women are still binge drinking or heavily drinking while pregnant.
The findings underscore “the ongoing need for comprehensive strategies to reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy,” they wrote in their report.
No safe amount
Though there is some debate over the relative harms and benefits of light drinking for the average person, the same really can’t be said for drinking while pregnant. Major health organizations like the CDC widely agree that there’s no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy. Alcohol can easily reach the fetus and negatively affect its development, raising the risk of miscarriage, premature birth, or developmental disorders; these risks increase the more someone regularly drinks.
Since the 1980s, the CDC has kept track of certain health trends and habits, including alcohol drinking, via the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), which regularly polls a nationally representative sample of Americans across the country.
Based on BRFSS data, the prevalence of alcohol use among pregnant women in the U.S. between 2018 and 2020 was 13.5%, while the prevalence of binge drinking (four or more alcoholic drinks at a single time during the past 30 days) was 5.2%. The researchers wanted to get an updated sense of things, so they looked at BRFSS data between 2021 and 2024 to come up with more current estimates. The findings were published last week in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
15.2% of pregnant women in the United States have drank alcohol sometime in the past month, the researchers estimated, while 4.9% have recently binge drank. Roughly 2% of pregnant women also recently heavily drank (eight or more alcoholic drinks within a week sometime in the past month). These prevalence rates did not change significantly over the time period. Women who were unmarried or reported frequent mental distress were also two to three times more likely to report drinking than others.
“Alcohol consumption during pregnancy remains a public health concern in the United States,” the authors wrote.
What to do
Other research has shown that alcohol drinking generally rose in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, along with many of the health problems that it can cause. More recently, though, some survey data has suggested that this trend is now reversing, possibly due to the public’s increased awareness of health risks even from moderate drinking.
With any luck, this decline has extended to pregnant women as well, though it will take time for newer estimates based on BRFSS data to emerge. Either way, there are certainly things that doctors and lawmakers could do to help discourage drinking while pregnant, the researchers say.
“Clinical approaches, such as routine screening for alcohol consumption and mental health conditions during pregnancy, and community-level approaches, such as point-of-sale warning signs or alcohol sales taxes, might help reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy and its associated adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes,” they wrote.
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