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Should Bars Offer Pregnancy Tests In Women's Restrooms?

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The story made headlines around the world: Pregnancy tests in a Minnesota bar's bathroom.

Since the first machine went in six years ago, they've spread to other states and yielded some surprising results. Now, the inventor thinks the tests could actually help prevent violence like school shootings.

"I was amazed that it was actually a viable prevention strategy," Jody Allen Crowe, founder of the group Healthy Brains for Children, said.

pregnancy test vendor
(credit: CBS)

For two years, the machines were closely monitored at bars in Alaska. Where more than two-thousand women agreed to a survey.

"Over 40 women found out they were pregnant by taking the pregnancy test in the women's restroom in a bar," Crowe said.

Those 42 women said the results kept them from drinking. The idea first raised eyebrows when Crowe put his first vending machine in Mankato.

Crowe, a school administrator, has long been focused on the damage drinking while pregnant can do.

"That damage that happens between 18 to 28 days of a pregnancy can be devastating to a child," he said.

In his book, The Fatal Link, he studied 69 school shooters. He was able to ask many mothers of the shooters if they drank while they were expecting, and he found 80-percent of them fit the "Five Factor Probability Tool" he developed.

"In a high number of those cases, you're going to find that those individuals had been prenatally exposed to alcohol," Crowe said.

In fact, he says in Florida Nikolas Cruz showed the same signs -- a temper, tormenting animals and trouble with impulse controls.

"His adopted mother was struggling with how could she provide a good, solid home life for him," Crowe said.

Crowe cautions that not all babies exposed to alcohol will resort to violence-- but he wants people to realize the risk. And, perhaps take the three minutes like 42 women in Alaska did -- to not even have to think that far ahead.

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