Lay off the booze, ladies. That’s what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wants us to do unless we are on some kind of as-yet-un-invented birth control with a 100% success rate. The reason? Women can get pregnant and pregnant women shouldn’t drink.

They also say that if a woman has more than eight drinks a week, she drinks too much. I guess the federal health agency has no idea how lovely it is in the modern era to enjoy a glass of wine or two at night before going to bed and starting the rat race of modern life all over again the next day. (Also, they are clearly not Scandal fans and have not seen how Olivia Pope can get it handled despite – or is it because of – her love of giant glasses of red wine.)

I get where this advice is coming from. I really do. There are serious potential risks to a fetus when the woman growing said fetus drinks. I gave birth last year and despite the insistence by many that the occasional glass of wine here or there wouldn’t cause any harm, I abstained. I just couldn’t handle the potential what-ifs. (I also asked my mom to smuggle me a bottle of wine to the hospital after I delivered.)

But the federal agency is forgetting a critical detail in their new public health campaign, and something I had the luxury of accounting for in my own very-much-wanted pregnancy: I chose to be pregnant. And I was able to get the care I needed while pregnant.

We can’t tell women not to drink for fear that they might be pregnant without also telling them that it’s their right to make their own reproductive choices. I would suggest a little less fear-mongering and a little more support for women who need reproductive healthcare – including abortion care.

Women throughout the US are increasingly facing serious threats to their reproductive rights that are impeding on their ability to choose whether they want to be pregnant or not and even to choose when they want to be pregnant. There are 61 million women of reproductive age in the US; reports show that more than 20 million of these women need publicly funded access to contraception.

Planned Parenthood is under attack in our country by anti-abortion activist groups like the recently indicted Center for Medical Progress. State governments, too, are conducting their own investigations into Planned Parenthood and, consistently, clearing the reproductive and sexual healthcare provider free of any wrongdoing.

And Congress has launched five separate investigations into the organization to-date, including one brutal five-hour hearing with Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards, during which many angry white men used their biggest shouty voices to stop Richards from talking and from sharing any actual, factual information.

And next month, the supreme court is set to hear the case of Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, the most significant reproductive rights case the court has heard since 1973’s Roe v Wade; the court’s eventual ruling on this case has the potential to not only shutter the majority of abortion clinics in the state of Texas, but to also seriously restrict the future of access to safe, legal abortion in America.

As Congress, still, somehow fails to understand, the federal funding Planned Parenthood receives comes in the form of Medicaid and Title X reimbursements, providing preventative health care and family planning services to those Americans in the lowest socio-economic strata who would not otherwise be able to afford or receive this kind of care. Abortion care – which let’s be clear, is healthcare – is already restricted from being provided for using these funds.

So the constant chatter from the Republican party about defunding Planned Parenthood would only serve to eliminate women’s ability to access family planning services and the kinds of well-woman annual care (which includes pelvic exams, cancer screenings, STD testing and contraception counseling) during which doctors can advise on various forms of birth control and, indeed, inform women of the risks they may face should they drink during pregnancy.

Instead of telling women what they should not do, I wish the CDC would instead focus their time, energy and resources into ensuring that all women are able to access healthcare that lets them make their own choices. Pregnancy and child-rearing is a physically trying, mentally exhausting and immensely expensive experience. No woman should ever be forced into this situation.

More access and more choice? I’ll drink (more than eight glasses of wine) to that.