The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends pregnant women get at least four vaccines: COVID-19, flu, whooping cough and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Critics say the shots provide questionable benefit while posing known risks — including increased miscarriage rates and exposure to neurotoxins.
According to the CDC, maternal vaccines are important “because pregnant women and their babies can get sick from diseases like COVID-19, flu, RSV and more.”
What the CDC doesn’t say is that if a pregnant woman gets a vaccine, there is a 100% chance that she will be exposed to vaccine ingredients that may harm her and her baby, according to Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense senior research scientist.
“There is a probability of disease exposure during pregnancy — but toxic exposure is assured with vaccination,” Jablonowski said. “Vaccines work by antagonizing the body with toxins, toxoids and other antigens to elicit an immune response. Pregnant women in modern medicine are trapped between fear and hazards.”
Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist and author of more than 1,000 publications, said that vaccines “are not medically necessary nor clinically indicated” during a healthy woman’s pregnancy.
“The downsides of vaccination during pregnancy can be serious,” McCullough said. “Vaccine-induced inflammation and fever can provoke a miscarriage, stillbirth or premature delivery, leaving the baby to face all the problems of being a ‘preemie.’”
That’s why many women tell their obstetricians they want to go “natural” and not take risks that come with vaccination, McCullough added.
Still, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists endorses the CDC’s recommendation that pregnant women get the COVID-19, RSV, Tdap and flu vaccines.
COVID vaccine: data show ‘clear harms’
Despite COVID-19’s low death rate, the CDC still urges “everyone ages 6 months and older” — including pregnant women — to get the updated COVID-19 shot.
According to immunologist and computational biologist Jessica Rose, Ph.D., there is insufficient data to warrant giving the shot to pregnant women. “On the contrary,” Rose said, “the data from a recent preprint study supports clear harms.”
For the study, posted April 29 on Preprints.org, five Czech, Danish and Swedish researchers examined approximately 1.3 million Czech women ages 18-39. They found that those who received COVID-19 vaccines had approximately 33% fewer successful pregnancies compared to unvaccinated women.
A peer-reviewed study published the next day in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, a Springer journal, found that among a group of pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19, the women who received a COVID-19 vaccine were more likely to miscarry compared to women who didn’t get a COVID-19 vaccine.
A study published in February in the peer-reviewed journal Science, Public Health Policy and the Lawidentified 37 safety signals for COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy, including miscarriage, fetal malformations, premature birth, stillbirth, newborn asphyxia and newborn death.
Yet the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists claims there is “no evidence of adverse maternal or fetal effects from vaccinating pregnant individuals with the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The authors of a 2023 JAMA Pediatrics study concluded that maternal mRNA COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy reduced the risk of newborn severe illness, intensive care admission and death. However, other researchers, including Harvard biostatistician Dr. Tina Hsieh, took issue with the study. She co-wrote an editorial, which also appeared in JAMA Pediatrics, challenging the authors’ conclusions.
According to the CDC, pregnant women are more likely to get “very sick” from COVID-19, compared to non-pregnant women, and “COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy is safe and effective.”
However, the record-high number of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports filed since the COVID-19 vaccine rollout shows the vaccine can cause serious harm, according to Jablonowski.
“COVID-19 shots were the vaccines that broke VAERS,” he said. “The CDC was expecting 1,000 reports per day, and got 2,500 reports per day. By April 2021, there were tens of thousands backlogged.”
Although VAERS reports require investigation before confirming that the vaccine caused the adverse event, the system historically has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
As of April 25, nearly 120,000 serious adverse events have been reported to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccination. Unfortunately, the system — which is co-managed by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — doesn’t have a way to easily parse out how many of those were submitted by pregnant women.
Pfizer lost records of 234 pregnant women in clinical trials
Clinical trial data for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine showed the shot particularly harmed women, including pregnant women, according to “The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity,” a book edited by Naomi Wolf that presents the data and related medical studies.
Wolf and others analyzed the data after a federal court ordered the release of the documents, following a successful lawsuit by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency.
The “Pfizer Papers” found over 42,000 serious adverse events in the first three months of availability of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, mostly in women. The documents also showed that Pfizer knew early on that the shots were causing menstrual damage at scale.
The company reported to the FDA that 72% of the recorded adverse events were in women. Of those, about 16% involved reproductive disorders and functions. Pfizer lost the records of 234 pregnant women who participated in its clinical trials. Of the 36 women whose records survived, over 80% lost their babies.
Pfizer also failed to inform regulators of the deaths of two women who participated in its COVID-19 vaccine trials until after key reporting deadlines had passed.
Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine package insert states that the shot can cause fainting, myocarditis, pericarditis and severe allergic reactions.
Research has shown that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines can cross the placental barrier, interfere with thyroid function, make a person more likely to get COVID-19, and increase the risk of stroke, acute heart disease and Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS).
Researchers have also found mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to have DNA contamination.
“That is a lot of risk for a vaccine that doesn’t prevent infection or transmission,” Jablonowski said.
Flu shot may contain mercury, is linked to 10 nervous system disorders
The CDC recommends pregnant women get the flu shot, of which there are several on the market. The CDC doesn’t recommend one shot over another for pregnant women.
Flu vaccines in multi-dose vials contain the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, according to the CDC. Most single-dose vials and pre-filled syringes of the flu shot don’t contain the preservative, as they’re intended for single use.
Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cross the placental barrier, Jablonowski said.
The CDC webpage for flu shot safety considerations during pregnancy makes no mention of thimerosal, nor does it encourage pregnant women to be sure they get a flu shot from a single-dose vial or pre-filled syringe to avoid mercury exposure.
According to the package insert for Afluria, a common flu shot, its most common side effects were headache and muscle ache. The package insert also states that post-marketing data have linked the flu shot to a host of other side effects, including blood and lymphatic system disorders, such as thrombocytopenia, and immune system disorders, such as anaphylactic shock.
Post-marketing data also linked the shot to damaged blood vessels in the kidneys and roughly 10 nervous system disorders, including GBS, neuralgia or nerve pain, paresthesia, convulsions, encephalomyelitis, encephalopathy, neuropathy and transverse myelitis.
A recent study showed the flu vaccine can disrupt women’s menstrual cycles, whether given alone or in conjunction with COVID-19 shots.
A 2017 study found a link between the flu shot and increased miscarriages.
However, the CDC webpage for flu shot safety considerations during pregnancy fails to mention the study. Instead, it cites several other studies that didn’t find an increase in miscarriages.
The flu vaccine is sometimes poorly matched to the specific flu strains circulating during a given year.
A large Cleveland Clinic study published last month on the MedRxiv preprint server showed employees who received the 2024-2025 formulation of the flu vaccine had a 27% greater chance of getting the flu than those who didn’t get the shot.
“If the aim is to protect the mother and child from the influenza virus, then a vaccine that is more likely to cause the disease it is intended to prevent is not the answer,” Jablonowski said.
The CDC does not recommend that pregnant women receive the nasal spray version of the flu vaccine, which uses a live virus. The flu shots use an inactivated virus.
Maternal RSV shot: FDA’s new vaccine regulator has ‘no confidence’ it’s a ‘net positive’
In 2023, the CDC began recommending pregnant women get a dose of Pfizer’s maternal RSV vaccine, Abrysvo, during weeks 32-36 of pregnancy to protect their babies from severe cases of RSV, a common respiratory virus.
According to Rose, the RSV shot is a “money-making scheme.” The shot costs just over $300 per dosein the private sector. The CDC can get it for around $230 per dose.
Studies on the maternal RSV vaccine haven’t clearly shown its benefits outweigh its risks, according to Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist.
Prasad recently replaced Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., as director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, a federal agency under the FDA that oversees the approval and regulation of vaccines, gene therapies and other biologic drugs.
Prasad wrote in an X post that the maternal RSV “doesn’t lower” babies’ risk of getting hospitalized for all lower respiratory tract infections — and the shot “may cause low birth weight.”
In an April 2024 Substack post, Prasad explained that two clinical trials — one published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the other in JAMA — failed to show that the shot lowered a baby’s chance of ending up in the hospital from respiratory infections in general.
The JAMA study said nothing about whether the shot affected hospitalization rates for any respiratory virus, and the NEJM study reported that the shot was effective only for reducing “severe RSV-associated” lower respiratory infections.
In other words, the shot didn’t reduce the likelihood that a baby would end up hospitalized from any kind a respiratory infection — just an RSV infection — Prasad explained.
“Focusing on only lower respiratory tract hospitalization from RSV is not a fair way to judge efficacy,” he wrote. “Those gains should result in lower rates of hospitalization for any respiratory virus, and ideally overall better health.”
Meanwhile, both studies reported an increase in preterm births. The trial reported on in JAMA was halted when researchers realized that the shot caused a 2% increased risk of preterm birth.
“I have no confidence this vaccine is a net positive,” Prasad wrote.
Abrysvo’s package insert warns that the shot carries a “potential risk of preterm birth,” which is why the shot is recommended no earlier than the third trimester and is linked to an increased risk of GBS.
Tdap: Exposing pregnant women to aluminum ‘inexcusable’
The CDC recommends pregnant women receive the tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (Tdap) vaccine in the early part of the third trimester, to protect the baby from pertussis, also known as whooping cough.
The reasoning is that the vaccinated pregnant woman will pass some of the protective antibodies to the baby before birth, which may help protect the baby from the disease’s serious complications until the child can get its first DTaP dose at age 2 months.
Both brands of the Tdap vaccine that the CDC encourages pregnant women to get contain aluminum, a known neurotoxin.
GSK’s U.S. formulation of the shot, Boostrix, has 0.3 milligrams (mg) of aluminum per dose. Sanofi Pasteur’s shot, Adacel, has 0.33 mg per dose.
Some researchers have linked aluminum in vaccines to autism.
Aluminum can cross the placental and blood-brain barriers, Jablonowski said.
“Aluminum exposure, either accidental or deliberate, of a pregnant mother is inexcusable.”