Donald Trump should carry a health warning for women

My son was six months old when Andrew Wakefield caused a global sensation by claiming the triple vaccine against mumps, measles and rubella caused autism. It sent shockwaves worldwide, causing massive decreases in MMR uptake, sparked a public health crisis, stoked the science deniers, and fuelled the anti-vax movement that reverberates ever louder today. 

It’s no exaggeration to say that many thousands of children died because of the charlatan that Wakefield has proven to be. 

And personally, I was thrown into a blind panic. I had already endured years of IVF to get pregnant and as a result, in some kind of reverse logic, had refused all kinds of prenatal tests because having gone through all that we had to get pregnant in the first place, I didn’t want any further interventions, nor to think about the risks or what could go wrong. And rationally, or not, I felt clear that I wouldn’t choose to end this pregnancy, no matter what, so I went forward believing all would be fine and thankfully, it was. 

Once he was born, every examination, blood test, vaccine, every medication, all the centile measurements, caused me consternation and moments of sheer inadequacy. The anxiety and self-blame as a new mum was never-ending. And I know that’s a shared endeavour.

So many medical procedures, drugs, artificial hormones and a plethora of intimate intrusions had gone into making this little mite that every time another needle went in his arm or he was judged negatively against some measure of an accepted norm, I spiralled into a guilt trip rather than feeling a satisfaction that I was protecting him from some proven harm. 

To be clear, there is no evidence to back up Trump’s assertion [and Nigel Farage’s tacit agreement] that paracetamol causes autism

Of course it’s irrational. I knew it then – as now. I am, after all, a huge believer in science and its value in ensuring a safer, healthier world for all our children. And what made it all the more obtuse was that he was literally born of science, made in a test tube when neither his father nor I were in the same country, never mind the same room. His was a pioneering conception and a medical first for Scotland. Kyle wouldn’t be here if not for the advancement of science and yet when it came to using science to protect him once he was, I so readily became a sceptic. 

Wakefield, with his fraudulent claims, cruelly exploited feelings that many mothers feel about decisions they make that will, potentially, have a material and possibly negative outcome on their children’s lives. It’s emotional manipulation, a blame game, and one that women experience throughout their lives – whether they become mothers or not, and even that fundamental choice can be burdened with recrimination. 

In the end, living in London, I was able to buy single vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella and justified both the privilege of availability and the high cost of access by convincing myself that even if Wakefield was wrong, it was better to be safe than sorry. And of course, years later when his fraud was exposed, I still felt vindicated that my son got the life-saving protection against disease he needed even when others had not. Wakefield damaged future generations with his deceit. A social bond was broken, a consensus that public health programmes depend on for their success. Children, tragically, suffered and parents were saddled with ‘if onlys’. But worse, despite the evidence, it fed into a global distrust in science and an increasing prejudice against autism.

And so, it was bad enough that President Donald Trump repeated false claims about vaccine safety when he described “fragile babies” being “pumped full of chemicals like horses” but to then link Tylenol (paracetamol) use in pregnancy to causing autism, and further play on maternal guilt by saying women should only take the one common painkiller approved for them to use if they couldn’t “tough it out”, was unacceptable.

“Fight like hell not to take it,” Trump instructed women, adding that if they absolutely had to then that would be something that they had to “work out with themselves.” In other words, let your conscience judge you.

There’s no mistaking the shades of Gilead in Trump’s approach. And of course, the president is not known for his light touch where women are concerned. His approach includes put-downs about looks, emotional stability, age, and intelligence. Who could forget his outburst ahead of the 2016 election when he erupted over tough questioning by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, later telling CNN: “You can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

His modus operandi is to reach for the lowest common denominator, and it is no coincidence that he chose to condemn pregnant women to shame and pain by branding the one painkiller known to be safe for them to use as a danger to their unborn baby rather than to them. 

Women shouldn’t be punished for being women and the goal should not be for them to withstand more pain than they need to, but to build a more equitable world where endless toughness is no longer a requirement for survival. Pregnancy, like menstruation and menopause, is not something to be ‘toughed out’ when science has developed ways to mitigate the suffering that can come with it.

To be clear, there is no evidence to back up Trump’s assertion [and Nigel Farage’s tacit agreement] that paracetamol causes autism and while his ongoing assault on women and their bodily autonomy continues with his more recent announcement, the second in less than a week, rooted in false medical claims and pseudo-science, that his administration is now conducting a review into the use of mifepristone, the drug most commonly used to terminate an early pregnancy, which was approved 25 years ago by the FDA and carries no proven risk, there is, however, plenty of evidence that Trump, who advocated injecting bleach to eliminate Covid, should carry a health warning as far as women are concerned.