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Meet Jody Allen Crowe. He's on a mission to save the world one baby at a time. As the
owner of a bar in Mankato, Minnesota, he happened upon a harrowing discovery: sometimes pregnant
women drink! Jody's done his research. Once he found out that pregnant women drink, he
went on a mission to find out exactly how many pregnant women drink, how much they drink,
and which women are doing the most drinking. Armed with this important information, he
founded Healthy Brains for Children, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of
a singular method of keeping pregnant women from drinking: putting pregnancy tests in
bar bathrooms. From the website: "Because the zygote is self-contained, any alcohol
in the bloodstream of the mother will not impact the embryo before the placenta is formed
and delivering nutrients to the embryo... By placing pregnancy test dispensers in the
women's bathrooms in bars, gas stations, hotels, restaurants, fitness centers, etc., women
will have a constant reminder to think before they take a drink of alcohol. They will be
able to take a pregnancy test in the privacy of the restroom without having to purchase
a pregnancy test over the counter at the drugstore or local big box stores. In a small community,
purchasing a pregnancy test can be an embarrassing event and expose the woman to the gossip of
the town. The advertisement on the dispenser reminds women to test each time they decide
to have a drink of alcohol to ensure their child will be born with an alcohol-free fetal
development." The New York Times article about Crowe points out that pregnancy tests are
among the most shoplifted products, citing a 16 and Pregnant star recently arrested for
the same as an example. Of course, a 16-year-old girl with no job and a lot to lose is probably
not whipping out her AmEx to buy a pregnancy test from a vending machine before dropping
another benjamin or two on a night out at a wine bar, but I digress. Hilariously, the
site further contends that a woman who has recently purchased a pregnancy test at a drug
store must then "rush to find a bathroom." I've been pregnant a few times. I used to
lead weekly discussions in a group of women on the topics of breastfeeding and fertility.
We all purchased pregnancy tests at some point or another, and on precisely zero of these
occasions that I was aware of did we then rush to find a public bathroom to test ourselves
so that we could get on with the business of eating sushi and getting shitfaced. Before
you get started on me, yes, I am aware that my personal observations do not constitute
a scientific study, but there are reasons we didn't rush to public bathrooms. There
are a lot of reasons. And there are even more reasons the business-savvy pregnancy test
marketing brains haven't ever done this before. A woman who uses this vending machine is necessarily:
Unaware of her pregnant or non-pregnant state. Either at the bar already before she considers
testing or too embarrassed to go to a drug store and buy one. In a room with a lot of
other women. Concerned deeply with the health of her Schrodinger's fetus. Not in a relationship
wherein a pregnancy would be publicly acceptable. Not planning a pregnancy. Not concerned enough
time in advance to buy one on the internet. Jody Allen Crowe has demonstrated a profound
inability to understand women, not to mention child development. As this study found, moderate
alcohol consumption in the first twelve weeks is not associated with negative outcomes,
and there's a reason for that. For all of Healthy Brains for Children's balking at alcohol
going through the placenta to the fetus, a placenta isn't developed enough to begin transmitting
much of anything at all to the fetus until it is nine weeks along, and not in portions
enough to harm it until it is fully developed at the end of the first trimester. In pregnancy
speak, the weeks start counting from the first day of the last period, which is usually about
two weeks before the fetus is conceived. Two weeks after conception is the expected period.
That's when you can have a positive pregnancy test. Eight weeks after that is three missed
periods. Even if you've missed the morning sickness, cravings, and absent periods, by
then you're starting to show, and you're probably even starting to feel the little *** kick.
That's plenty of time for our pregnant mother to go on a handful of benders before her fetus
is at all damaged. So, what baby is Jody really saving? Jody is saving the baby that has been
mistakenly conceived by a woman who does not want an abortion. She is mortified to go into
a drug store but she is totally okay buying a test in a public bathroom full of strange
women. She is twelve weeks pregnant or more and has not noticed. She wants to drink a
whole lot tonight but wants to make sure that these two missed periods for which she's been
too humiliated to test don't mean that she's pregnant before she does so, and if she is,
she'll go home and start knitting booties instead. She wants to learn her fate in a
bar bathroom stall and cry over a positive test there, with only the comfort of sharpie
graffiti on the walls naming men at the bar who have sores on their dicks, and maybe the
girl fighting with her boyfriend on her iPhone in the next stall. She would rather die than
face the humiliation of going to a drug store and buying one, then testing at home, but
she's brave enough to face the world with her unwanted baby belly. Maybe she'll throw
a baby shower. So that's pretty unlikely, right? I mean if you're going to start a business
or start selling a product of some kind, you probably want a wider base of potential customers.
And if you're going to save the world, you're probably going to want to start with a larger
pool of save-able victims. Jody Allen Crowe's crusade against fetal alcohol syndrome ultimately
amounts to policing pregnant women. It is a crusade to make sure all women remember
that, want it or not, they're the bearers of the next generation and should not even
think about selfishly enjoying themselves before they've done everything possible to
protect the babies they might have some day. But not only that, he wants women to remember
that they're too stupid to do it on their own, because he can't even imagine a single
possible way to know whether you're damaging a baby without constant reminders every time
you have to take a *** that you might be pregnant. Jody didn't bother to consider what
women might already know or be capable of. In Jody's mind, he's pretty sure that he just
saved the next generation of children from their stupid, bumbling moms. That's some nice
sexism, Jody.