Posted on 08/29/2014 5:59:53 AM PDT by wagglebee
If you live in Ontario and enjoy a bottle of wine with dinner or a couple beers after getting the yard work finished, you will be exposed to an aggressive marketing campaign the next time you hit the local LCBO to purchase your booze. The government-owned liquor distribution branch launched an advertising blitz this week with a goal of educating consumers about the dangers of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS).
In addition to installing a series of captivating posters at their approximately 640 stores and outlets, LCBO staff will also be required to watch a video designed to educate them as to the complications with FAS and other disorders related to drinking while pregnant.
Suffice it to say, this is an expensive awareness campaign. But the financial implications are not the troubling aspect. Indeed, most people would easily justify the use of tax dollars to ensure babies have as healthy a start to life as possible.
My full-time job is to advocate for the very children this campaign is drawing attention to. So when I heard about this campaign, the realization quickly set in that something doesn’t jive here. On the one hand we (society and government) are concerned about the health of a developing child in the womb, and on the other we allow them to be aborted for reasons as flippant as inopportune timing.
Don’t get me wrong, prenatal health is very important, but why the double standard? When some Canadians call for the legal protection of fetuses they are accused of meddling with a woman’s rights and infringing on her bodily autonomy, but should that same woman choose to drink while pregnant she is condemned as negligent.
The provincial government in Ontario, which operates the LCBO, will no doubt be investing millions of dollars in this FAS campaign to ensure that every preborn baby has a healthy start to life outside the womb. The campaign is designed to make society generally and pregnant women specifically to think carefully before drinking while pregnant. Meanwhile, that same government is spending similar amounts of money every year to pay for the abortion of one in four pre-born babies. For 25% of Ontario babies, their “healthy start” comes to a very quick and violent end.
Public awareness campaigns focused on pregnancy and drinking expose a cognitive dissonance in our society. You want to kill your baby before birth? No problem. We’ll even pay for it. But don’t you dare have a glass of wine while pregnant! And if you do, we’ll shame you with a million dollar advertising blitz.
This alcohol and pregnancy awareness campaign, when compared with Canada’s lack of any legal protection for children in the womb, makes absolutely no sense. Canada’s shame of being the only Western nation without an abortion law is untenable and totally inconsistent with what science teaches about the most vulnerable members of the human family. Thankfully, with advances in medicine and treatment, babies born with FAS can still lead a productive life. Unfortunately this does not hold true for aborted babies.
Prior to seeing the plethora of ads in the coming weeks, a pregnant woman may have been unaware of the serious complications that drinking while pregnant could have on her pre-born child. For this reason alone, the LCBO campaign is a good one. It is high time that society is also made aware of what abortion does to preborn children. Only then will the cognitive dissonance finally resolve. Only then will human rights finally apply to all human beings.
No. You would have to point to a specific nutrient that all women are lacking, unless you are joking.
Many don’t like to realize that there are a tremendous number of boys with sever ADS conditions.
I say they are not out in community.
Those disgusting anti-smoking commercials, which they insist on showing at dinner time, also warn against smoking while pregnant.
That argument will not carry much weight with the pro abort crowd
They would tell you that in one case it’s about taking care of something you want, while in the other case it’s getting rid of something you don’t want. So from their perspective it makes perfect sense.
The essence of the anti abortion case is that the conceived being inside the uterus is a human being. Only convincing the other side of that can win the case. Everything else is quite irrelevant.
Obesity, ADS, alzhimers, lactose intolerance, etc. all begin their “epidemic” rise in the 1970’s. The same time as the healthy eating (i.e.: Meat, salt, and fat are bad; carbs and vegetable oils are good) programs began.
Correlation is not causation, but it is cause for investigation.
Interesting.
I think the bombardment sometimes weekly, of super heat on the nervous system of the developing fetus by ultrasonography is worth considering.
Diet is very very causative in heart disease, and obesity, both which are new, but since the early 20th century.
Whit sugar, flour and pasteurized dairy are problematic, as are products processed from non grass fed meat.
But Autism - I don’t know. Maybe.
Exercise is more important than diet when it comes to obesity. Heart disease is more genetic, but is also enhanced by a sedentary life style.
Both were well known in the past. R.E. Lee had heart problems and high blood pressure. Look at drawings from the 18th and 19th century, obesity was quite common among the landed classes. The general rise in prosperity in the West has enabled even the poor to live that lifestyle now.
My grandfather lived to be 98 years old. He spent 46 years in the U.S. Army and was retired 36 years (he had a one year break in service in 1917). He had bacon and eggs fried in the bacon grease for breakfast 6 days a week and pancakes/waffles and sausage on Sundays. He also walked 4 miles in less than an hour every day but Sunday.
I have lost count of the farmers I have encountered who are in their 70’s and can out work your average 18 year old. The farmers eat well too. It is when someone convinces them to give up working and retire that they die. Typically in about four years. This is why I took up golf, when I am forced to retire by the SS I can walk 18 when I am not at my part time cash job.
Sweeteners in everything is part of the problem too. Sugar, corn syrup, or fructose so it “taste good”. I make a lot of stuff from scratch. With meats it is the hormones and antibiotics, not the grain feeds. I do think grass fed taste better, but grain fed is more tender. Find a butcher who does local critters.
How does all this relate to autism? My contention is that the rise in autism (and most of the other modern health issues) is related to the rise in health fads in the 70’s. Specifically, that not drinking at all during pregnancy may be linked. Also, no one has explored the previous recreational drug use angle either.
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