About 500 babies are born each year in Australia suffering from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS).

This is a terrible disability with abnormalities of brain, facial features and heart.

FAS sufferers do badly in life, with educational delays and behavioural problems amongst other things.

Another 5000 babies are born each year with some, but not all, of the deformities and disabilities — a state of affairs called Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

FASD is the biggest preventable cause of birth defects and brain damage in unborn children in Australia today.

These are things you would not inflict on your worst enemy.

Or would you?

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The Australian Medical Journal this week published evidence that 80 percent of pregnant Australian women drink alcohol while pregnant.

Some experts blame the National Health and Medical Research Council for confusing women by changing its recommendations twice in the last ten years — from advocating total abstinence in pregnancy, to suggesting that small amounts are OK, and now back to recommending total abstinence again.

Sure, it is not a very impressive performance by the boffins.

But you would think a mother-to-be might err on the side of caution in such a potentially life-damaging matter.

A woman making a conscious decision to expose her unborn child to alcohol exposes him/her to at least a possible risk of entering life pre-damaged.

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The worst time to drink is in the second to eighth weeks of the baby’s development (when the brain is forming).

Some women mightn’t realise they are pregnant until those weeks are gone or nearly gone — a good reason, perhaps, for all women of child-bearing age never to drink.

All alcohol drink bottles should carry monster — and graphic — warnings to females of child-bearing years that they must never use alcohol.

Is that too much to ask them to give up?

* * *

Not really. Parenthood is all about giving up things up.

One’s priorities change when a new human life completely dependent on oneself comes into one’s care.

Well, they should.