The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended this week that sexually active women of reproductive age, who consume alcohol, should be on birth control.

The CDC has recommended it with overwhelming evidence that alcohol intake during pregnancy, even before the woman knows about her pregnancy, poses major risks to her newborn suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or the more serious fetal alcohol syndrome.

The CDC report said, “An estimated 3.3 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 are at risk of exposing their developing baby to alcohol because they are drinking, sexually active, and not using birth control to prevent pregnancy”.

It said that out of every four women who stop using birth control for conceiving, three keep on drinking alcohol. It has recommended women to stop drinking or use birth control to avoid irreversible birth defects in their unborn babies.

Anne Schuchat, CDC principal deputy director, said that alcohol can harm a developing baby permanently even before a woman is aware of her pregnancy. In the United States, nearly 50% of all pregnancies are unplanned and even in case planned, most women aren’t aware that they have conceived for the first month or so, when they could still be drinking. It is really risk and it is better to not to take a chance.

The Catholic Church has embraced the CDC recommendation within limits. Duquesne University bioethicist Gerard Magill said that they are totally behind the CDC, in its saying that alcohol is harmful for the health of the embryo and women must plan their pregnancy and shouldn’t consume alcohol. However, the church is only in favor of natural contraception, like abstinence or the rhythm method.