ATLANTA, Georgia (The Adobo Chronicles) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has just released a new report that estimated 3.3 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 years are at risk of exposing their developing baby to alcohol because they are drinking, sexually active, and not using birth control to prevent pregnancy.

“Alcohol can permanently harm a developing baby before a woman knows she is pregnant,” said CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, M.D.

Women of childbearing age are advised not to drink at all if there’s any possibility of pregnancy, federal officials said.  Drinking alcohol puts women in danger of having their babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder.

Following the CDC announcment, The Adobo Chronicles conducted two polls — one in the U.S. and another in the Philippines — asking women of childbearing age whether or not they were willing to give up alcohol in order to have healthy babies. The results from the two countries were exact opposites.

U.S. women would rather give up pregnancy because refraining from alcohol jeopardizes their social life and because the cost of rearing babies have skyrocketed over the last decade or so.

Filipino women, on the other hand, said that they would prefer to have babies because Philippine Catholic Bishops have previously stated that children are the country’s greatest resource and that a population increase would be a great boost to the Philippine economy.

It is estimated that yearly remittances to the Philippines from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have reached a staggering $18 Billion.