Should women abstain from going to the movies throughout pregnancy?

October 23, 2015 4:27 PM

Going to the movies a few times during pregnancy may seem harmless. But it involves spending time in traffic to get there. The serious harms of spending time in traffic is well documented, also for fetuses, and there is no safe lower limit of exposure. While there, to my knowledge, is no direct evidence that the small amount of exposure to trafic on the way to the movies is harmful to pregnant women or fetuses, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and there is plenty of indirect evidence, in particular from members of the opposite sex in the same age range as the soon-to-be mother.

As going to the movies is not a necessary activity, we need to develop guidelines explaining the risks of moviegoing to pregnant women and advise strongly against any such activity. Even a very small risk is not worth taking when the circumstances are that the activity is not absolutely necessary."
The British Medical Journal provides a fascinating venue for a complex discussion about medical and normative duties. How do these popular comments interact with the medical debate? - and how does the article do so? Are we on the verge of peer reviewed articles become part of the popular discourse for all the good and challenges this poses?

posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory (1 comment total)

If Mom had known she was expecting
she might have gone to see Jaws
instead of picking a film where the sound effects
came right up through the floor
and I'd be differently formed

posted by Faint of Butt at 4:30 PM on October 23, 2015 [2 favorites]