Tag: pregnancy

Democrats Invite Women To Freeze Their Eggs So They Can Go Fight Wars

The military has announced plans to cover costs for sperm and egg freezing for service members, expanding a negligent “reproductive” effort to the detriment of military personnel and their families.

The pilot program, launching Sept. 14 under the Veteran Families Health Services Act of 2025, will run for three years and reimburse costs of sperm freezing up to $500 and egg cryopreservation up to $10,000 for service members who meet deployment or separation requirements.

The program fulfills a longtime Democrat-backed effort to disassociate military women from maternal family roles; increases dissonance in already strained military families, further divorces procreation from spousal stability, and ensures mothers can be separated from their children.

The Sexes Are Not Equal in Combat
Women have supported the armed forces in non-combat roles since the development of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901, with increased but limited access to positions until 2013. At that time, then-President Barack Obama supported a lifting of the ban by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. By 2016, gender specific roles in the military were effectively eliminated.

The exclusion of women from serving in combat roles has been justified. Combat poses the direct and imminent risk of injury and death, as well as placing soldiers in tactical locations that cannot adequately accommodate gender separation. Forward operating bases and outposts offer little to no separate housing or privacy barriers between the sexes. Experiential hardships can extend well beyond privacy, encompassing lack of food and sleep that disproportionately harm women.

A small-scale study of Army rangers claiming that women are less physiologically affected by rigorous training than men, does not match up with any large-scale studies of women exposed to extreme physical hardship. The study presents an insufficient apples-to-oranges comparison and should not be utilized as an argument to place excessive physical strain on women in the military.

The Biological Clock
Soon after the military opened doors to place women in hazardous duty stations, Democrat-led efforts for IVF-related services began. Building on that effort, in 2018 Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., called IVF the “most effective form of assisted reproductive technology” for service members whose fertility was affected by their service. Rather than improving health and safety for women, the costly, unethical, and dangerous technology was promoted.

Ten years after so-called integration, women who entered combat in their peak fertility years are now aging out of childbearing, or at least edging closer to the end of their fertile years. The possibility of deployment has likely affected the many military women choosing to begin families after age 35, further decreasing their likelihood of conceiving naturally.

As infertility continues to disproportionately plague women in service, IVF serves as an expensive, politically driven distraction.

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RFK Jr.’s “Gold-standard Science” Runs Into Another AI Citation Scandal

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent years denouncing the federal health establishment. And as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, he promised to replace its failures with “gold-standard science.”

Now his department appears to have replaced some of the science with AI hallucinations.

Earlier in August, a federal judge rebuked the Department of Health and Human Services for using scientific citations that either do not exist or do not support the claims attached to them. The citations appeared in official funding notices used to reshape the federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP).

The episode is especially damaging because it is not the first. In 2025, the Kennedy-chaired Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission released a major report on children’s health that contained invented studies, garbled references, and visible fingerprints of artificial intelligence.

Phantom Studies Behind a Real Policy

The latest controversy comes from Hennepin County, Minnesota v. HHS, a lawsuit challenging Kennedy’s overhaul of the TPP.

Congress created the program to fund local initiatives shown to reduce teen pregnancy, along with “promising” approaches that could be tested. HHS took a much narrower approach in 2026.

The department issued new grant notices that pushed recipients toward abstinence, “body literacy,” reproductive-goals counseling and sexual-risk-avoidance education. A separate HHS policy notice barred programs from “encouraging, normalizing, or promoting sexual activity for minors” and required compliance with administration policies against “gender ideology” and DEI.

HHS also terminated virtually all existing TPP awards, according to the court.

That prompted Hennepin County, King County in Washington, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States to sue.

On August 19, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper granted a preliminary injunction against implementation of the new policy and funding notices. He found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that HHS acted arbitrarily and capriciously.

Then came the largely overlooked part that made national news this week.

A “Hallmark of AI-generated Citations”

HHS tried to support its new emphasis on “body literacy,” which it defines as understanding how a healthy body functions, including reproductive anatomy, physiology and hormonal patterns, and interpreting biological signals to make informed health decisions.

The problem was that much of the cited “science” could not be found.

 Cooper wrote:

On the topic of body literacy, the notices (remarkably) reference public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited — a hallmark of AI-generated citations.

He continued:

Two out of the seven appear to be completely made up. Three of the seven did not publish in the cited journals but appear to have similar titles to articles published in completely different journals.… And according to the early-stage factual record, there seem to be no pregnancy prevention curricula and programs that “center [on] body literacy” and other newly-imposed TPP requirements.

HHS did not bury the questionable references in a stray litigation brief. They appeared in government notices telling applicants what “science” federal money would follow.

The court found a deeper problem. HHS itself acknowledged a “near absence of body literacy education standards nationwide.” Yet the agency made “body literacy” a central requirement for grantees.

Cooper said HHS offered no adequate explanation for imposing that approach across the program.

HHS funding materials nevertheless tell applicants that eligible programs must reflect “high-quality evidence of effectiveness” and align with its “commitment to gold-standard science.”

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New Zealand: Deaths up, fertility down; is this the legacy of covid “vaccines”?

The births and deaths figures for the year ended June 2026 have just been released by StatsNZ. Compared to the previous year: 

  • Births were down 3.6% 
  • Deaths were up 1.9% 
  • Fertility per woman was down 3.8% 
  • Infant mortality was up by 2.7%, although this last statistic was inflated to some extent by late registrations. 

The rate of deaths per thousand population had been declining since a peak of 7.59 in 2022, falling to 7.02 in 2025. The 2026 figures reversed this trend with a rise to 7.10. This compares to the 2015 – 2019 average of 6.84, meaning that deaths are currently running at 3.8% above pre-pandemic levels. This equates to an additional 1,411 deaths in the year to June 2026, which would not have been expected if pre-pandemic trends had continued.

The New Zealand (“NZ”) fertility rate has been declining every year since 2008 and is now at a historic low. The 2026 figures are 28% below levels necessary to maintain a population. Despite this, the NZ population is continuing to grow as a result of net immigration.

The most concerning figure in the latest data is therefore the upward movement in the rate of mortality. This increase in levels of excess mortality is very concerning. Although the 2026 rise does not yet amount to a trend, it should be a red flag. It points to a drop in the underlying level of immunity which is affecting the whole population.

In this light, it remains disturbing that Health NZ are not closely investigating the possible causes. A comparison of health outcomes of the covid-vaccinated with the unvaccinated is long overdue. Studies published overseas which we have covered have pointed to differences in rates of cancer and cardiac problems, for example. These have disproportionately affected younger age groups.

RCR has produced a comprehensive report showing that 311,257 NZ teens were exposed to an elevated risk of myocarditis from covid injections despite the government having been warned of this risk before rolling out vaccination for this age group. We have previously reported high levels of chest pain presentations for under 40s at emergency departments. Prior to the pandemic, it was recognised in the literature that there is a five-year elevated risk of complications following a myocarditis diagnosis. Five years have now passed since these injections. Health NZ should be following up and producing a very detailed picture of cardiac health outcomes as a precautionary measure. 

A great many published studies have focused on investigating an immune deficit following covid vaccination. Since the year-to-June figures were compiled, more evidence of a health deficit in NZ has emerged. You must have read about the depth of the current flu and winter illness seasonal health crisis. Hospitals are overwhelmed as never before.

On 15 August the NZ Herald reported ‘Middlemore Hospital hits ‘terrifying’ record as paramedics treat patients in corridors’. In one 24-hour period nearly 500 patients presented to the emergency department at Middlemore, beating the previous record of 280. 

According to Stuff newspaper, the St John ambulance service activated its major incident response and emergency operations centre after a week of sustained exceptional demand culminated in its busiest day on record.

This week Stuff headlined ‘Flu wards set up, elective surgery cancelled as hospital admissions surge’. The NZ Herald reported high rates of student absences due to sickness and parents unable to cope at home. The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners has asked practices nationwide to reinstate some covid-era infection controls, including phone-first triage and separating patients with respiratory symptoms.

Without a detailed investigation of the causes of the higher levels of sickness among the general population broken down by age, vaccination status and disease type, it is not possible for Health NZ to understand and respond appropriately to the current health crisis. A task force should be set up to undertake this analysis as a precautionary priority and make their findings public. This will inform and potentially reassure the public by determining how much of this effect is due to covid infection and how much to vaccination or other factors.

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Fauci Privately Flagged Miscarriage Risk Before Telling Pregnant Women There Were ‘No Red Flags’

Newly disclosed text messages show Dr. Anthony Fauci privately entertained the possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine could trigger first-trimester miscarriages, months before he told the public there was no risk.

The messages come from a trove that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released, containing more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails the Senate Homeland Security Committee pulled from Fauci’s government-issued phone. Among the trove is a January 2021 text chain between Fauci, Dr. Vivek Murthy and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who went on to serve as the Biden administration’s surgeon general and CDC director, in which the three officials worked through how the vaccine’s risks might interact with pregnancy.

On Jan. 25, Murthy opened the thread with a question. “For pregnant women considering getting the vaccine, are you aware of any data or theoretical reason why vaccinating early vs late in pregnancy would be preferred? And any sense of when there will be more robust data on vaccine risk in pregnant women?”

Walensky noted that more than 15,000 pregnant women had already enrolled in the CDC’s V-safe vaccine safety monitoring system. Fauci wrote there “are no data or theoretical reason to believe that vaccinating early versus later in pregnancy would be preferred.” He also flagged a caveat that would later look prescient. “Yet, some people (even female health care professionals) feel concerned about injecting a ‘genetic’ vaccine very early in pregnancy,” he wrote.

Nearly two hours passed before Fauci circled back with something he had not mentioned the first time. “I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of,” he wrote. “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”

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The War on Drugs Has Come to the Maternity Ward

At first glance, a new mother taking part in a drug screening seems reasonable. For the sake of the mother and child, a doctor performs a clinical test to rule out any complications or signs of risks to the newborn.

But the story quickly takes a dark turn. If there’s a positive test result, it doesn’t stay between the doctor and the patient. In 24 states and Washington, D.C., a positive test alone is enough to initiate a child welfare report, according to a report by the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. Depending on the state, that test could land the mother on a child abuse registry. Worse still, the mother may be notified the test has occurred only after the fact.

This seems to run afoul of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ferguson v. City of Charleston (2001), where the Court found it unconstitutional to drug test pregnant women without consent solely for “law enforcement purposes.” 

However, Enrima Ukoha, an obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, tells Reason this practice—known as “test and report”—is “common” and “often happens in non-consensual ways.” In fact, over six years, The Marshall Project found “at least 70,000 cases in 21 states” where parents were referred to law enforcement after a positive test for drug or alcohol use.

Ukoha says a lot of medical professionals are influenced by “stereotypes and stigma” associated with people who use substances in pregnancy, leading them to make “false assumptions about their ability to parent.”

The practice developed as part of the response to the opioid crisis roiling the nation. Each year, nearly 10 percent of births in the U.S. are affected by drug or alcohol use. 

To deal with the issue, Congress amended the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 in ways that made it easier for these nonconsensual tests to occur. The 1974 law ties federal grant funding to state-level development of “plans of safe care” for infants “born and identified as being affected by substance abuse or withdrawal symptoms.” It also requires healthcare providers involved in the “delivery or care” of affected infants to “notify the child protective services system”; however, it also states that nothing in the law should be read as requiring “prosecution for any illegal action.”

In 2016, Congress passed an amendment changing the requirement to include infants affected by all substance abuse by striking the word illegal from its substance abuse clause. In 2018, lawmakers passed another amendment that put money behind the idea, authorizing grants to assist state agencies with “developing, updating, implementing, and monitoring” their plans of safe care. And in 2019, the law was again amended to provide “civil and criminal liability” to anyone who makes a “good-faith report of child abuse or neglect.”

There is no federal definition for child abuse or neglect. Left to their own devices, each state has adopted different standards for reporting and treatment. Ukoha says the process “varies across providers, institutions, and states,” but the result is that “individuals are tested in pregnancy without their knowledge or consent.” 

Apart from potentially being separated from their newborns, mothers risk placement on child abuse registries—which would prevent them from holding certain jobs or participating in school activities—or incarceration. In the case of Idaho mom Nicole Hamann, one positive test for THC got her 10 years on the state’s child protection registry, according to a joint report by CBS News and The Marshall Project. 

But moms can find themselves facing criminal charges even when the substances are legal. In South Carolina, Ayanna Harris-Rashid was arrested and faced a 10-year felony sentence after testing positive for THC. Harris-Rashid admitted to using CBD, which is legal in the state and can contain trace amounts of THC, to “relieve cramping and nausea.” Her charges were dropped a year after her arrest. 

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MORE FAUCI PHONE REVELATIONS: Newly Released Texts Show Biden Surgeon General Vivek Murthy Discussed Concerns About mRNA Shots Causing MUTATIONS in Developing Fetuses

Newly released text messages from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s government-issued iPhone expose yet another stunning example of the COVID regime’s two-faced messaging.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) released the January 25-26, 2021 text chain Monday as part of the initial dump from more than 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails recovered from Fauci’s government phone. The exchange is damning.

Fauci himself raised the alarm about the second dose, writing that because “many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.” Walensky replied that it was “definitely a good point, esp after dose two.”

Then Murthy piled on. In a follow-up text, the man who would soon become Biden’s Surgeon General responded to Fauci’s concern by adding: “I’ve been hearing the concern about the mRNA causing mutations in the developing fetus as well. That’s a really good point re the cytokine storm post second dose.”

The very next day, Murthy flagged a World Health Organization announcement advising against pregnant women taking the Moderna vaccine due to lack of data, asking Fauci and Walensky for their take because “I imagine we will all get asked about this.”

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COVID Vaccine in Early Pregnancy Led to Higher Rates of Two Birth Defects

A new study from Iran found that two rare birth defects — atrioventricular septal defects and cleft palate — occurred more often in infants whose mothers received an aluminum-containing COVID-19 vaccine during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy compared with mothers who received the vaccine later or not at all.

A new study from Iran found that two rare birth defects — atrioventricular septal defects (AVSD) and cleft palate — occurred more often in infants whose mothers received a COVID-19 vaccine during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy compared with mothers who received the vaccine later or not at all.

Unlike studies conducted in the U.S. and Europe, none of the women in the Iranian study received mRNA vaccines — however, all of the COVID-19 vaccines available in Iran contain 0.25-0.50 milligrams of aluminum adjuvant, Children’s Health Defense Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski told The Defender.

Shots containing aluminum are not typically recommended for pregnant women in their first trimester, Jablonowski said.

Participants in the new study received either inactivated-virus or viral-vector COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers anonymized the specific vaccine brands “due to ethical and regulatory constraints.”

Other Iranian studies indicate that China’s Covilo, also known as Sinopharm, is the most commonly administered COVID-19 vaccine in Iran. That shot, Coviran Barkat, and the India-produced Covaxin were available in Iran at the time of the study.

The study, published last month in Sage Open Medicine, analyzed 1,352 pregnancies from two Iranian cities between 2022 and 2023.

Researchers compared three groups: 303 women who received no COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy, 262 women who received at least one dose between conception and 11 weeks, 6 days of gestation — the window when fetal organs form — and 787 women vaccinated after the first trimester.

The authors said they were motivated by a gap in the research: COVID-19 vaccination is widely recommended for pregnant women worldwide, yet few studies have examined the link between early-pregnancy vaccination and birth defects.

“Research assessing whether these vaccines could influence embryonic development is crucial,” they wrote.

The authors cautioned that their findings are preliminary, based on small numbers of cases, and do not establish that vaccination caused the birth defects.

Jablonowski agreed that the study can’t establish causation but said it offers a starting point.

“It can generate hypotheses, and with this study, we’ve been handed a really good argument to start generating hypotheses,” particularly about vaccines that contain aluminum adjuvants.

Birth defects rare, but more common among women vaccinated in first trimester

Researchers evaluated birth defects detected during routine prenatal ultrasound examinations performed between 18 and 20 weeks of pregnancy between 2022 and 2023 among women in two major Iranian cities.

Demographic and pregnancy characteristics were relatively balanced across the groups, as were previous COVID-19 infection rates.

Although birth defects were uncommon overall, the researchers found that women vaccinated during the first trimester had babies who had them at higher rates.

Among the findings:

  • Six cases of AVSD, a congenital heart defect, occurred in the first trimester, compared with none in the unvaccinated group and one in the group of women who received the vaccine after the first trimester.
  • Two cases of cleft palate occurred among women vaccinated before 12 weeks, compared with no cases in either comparison group.

The study did not capture spontaneous abortions occurring before routine ultrasound screening, or pregnancies terminated before anomaly scans, the authors said.

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Academia Embarrasses Itself… Again

Over at Twitchy, a publication that curates the news in funny yet insightful ways, a headline reads, “Head of Medical School Tells Congresswoman the Vast Majority of Pregnancies Occur in Women.”  Sure enough, Twitchy is telling the truth.

During witness testimony before a congressional committee examining the impact of forced “diversity,” preferential (non-merit-based) admissions, and “woke” ideology upon the quality of medical schools, the chancellor of UC San Francisco testified under oath that not all pregnancies come from women.  That chancellor, Samuel Hawgood, is not some administrative bureaucrat with a made-up bachelor’s degree in the discriminatory effects of man-made “climate change” upon “transgender” Pakistanis (and an obligatory master’s in why American taxpayers must foot the bill for all “sex change” surgeries around the world).  No, Hawgood is an actual pediatrician who previously served as UCSF’s dean of the School of Medicine.  A man who did his residency at the Royal Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Brisbane cannot tell us how babies are made.

It is astounding to watch just how far down the propaganda rabbit hole so-called “institutions of higher learning” have dragged society.  Until very recently, this kind of public display of sophistry would have embarrassed an intellectual of the lowest order.  For a medical doctor and university chancellor to pretend that men can get pregnant is a flashing neon sign warning just how corrupt and dishonest all of academia has become.  These days, university leaders sound indistinguishable from North Korean spokespeople assuring starving citizens that they are better off than anyone else in the world.

How did we get to this point in time when professors tell rank lies to the American people, while hiding behind their titles as false evidence that those lies are somehow “truths”?  Well, social media favorite “Oilfield Rando” points to part of the problem.  In an X post responding to the doctor’s pseudoscientific testimony, Rando includes an itemization of Chancellor Hawgood’s university pay and accompanying benefits.  The man in charge of one of the country’s top educational institutions takes home well over a million dollars each year.  Unless Chancellor Hawgood is a moron who genuinely believes men can get pregnant, it is likely that he is willing to sell his intellectual reputation and personal honor for a seven-figure salary.

What does that say about the current state of our society?  The modern university arose from Christian monasteries dedicated to God’s truth.  This is why divinity degrees are generally accorded highest honor during processions accompanying graduation ceremonies.  As monasteries developed into secular institutions of higher learning, they remained places dedicated to the pursuit of truth.  Harvard’s motto, veritas, simply means “truth.”

For hundreds of years, faculty members did not take positions on college campuses because they sought fame or fortune.  They became scholars and professors because they were dedicated to the rigors of their calling.  Just as a Christian monk lived in poverty because the pursuit of truth provided spiritual nourishment and personal fulfillment, a scholar embraced a penurious life within academia in exchange for the privilege of seeking authentic truth.  The reward — unvarnished enlightenment — was understood to be more valuable than money.

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As ICAN Warned, RSV Vaccine for Pregnant Women May Pose Risks

Three years ago, ICAN sent a letter to members of FDA’s vaccine committee warning of the dangers of Pfizer’s RSV pregnancy vaccine, Abrysvo. A recent study supports ICAN’s position that those concerns were warranted.

In May of 2023, ICAN’s legal team sent a letter to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), the FDA committee that makes recommendations on whether or not a new vaccine should be approved. In the letter, ICAN asked the committee to hold off on recommending the approval of Abrysvo until concerning safety signals from the clinical trials had been further investigated. The committee ignored ICAN’s warnings and, shortly after, FDA approved the vaccine.

ICAN’s letter highlighted the following concerns from the Abrysvo clinical trial: “In mothers, serious adverse events included prolonged labor, premature delivery, postpartum hemorrhage, arrested labor, and gestational hypertension, the most frequent of which were preeclampsia and fetal distress.”

A recent study shows safety signals for pregnancy-associated hypertensive disorders (including gestational hypertension), premature rupture of membranes (PROM), and preterm PROM, after receipt of the Abrysvo vaccine. In fact, even though this study was sponsored by Pfizer, the study authors couldn’t avoid stating that “[f]urther epidemiological studies are needed to refine risk estimates….”

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Nonconsensual Drug Testing Has Criminalized Tens of Thousands of Pregnant People

New York had the chance to make history in more arenas than basketball this June. Earlier this month, the New York Senate passed the Maternal Health, Dignity and Consent Act, becoming the first legislative chamber in the country to pass legislation that would require informed consent for drug testing of pregnant people. But despite that promising step, the state has once again failed to protect some of its most vulnerable residents from unjust criminalization.

There was a broad coalition of support for this legislation, including researchers, health care providers, and advocates. Several prominent medical and legal groups supported the legislation, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the New York City Bar Association. However, despite the wave of support for the legislation, the victory in the New York Senate was short-lived. The Maternal Health, Dignity and Consent Act died when it didn’t get a vote in the Assembly.

This isn’t the first time this kind of legislation has failed to pass in New York; advocates have been trying for seven years to ban nonconsensual drug testing of pregnant people and have failed every year. This legislation, which has repeatedly been reintroduced only to fail, would have prohibited health care providers in the state from drug testing pregnant or postpartum people and their newborns without explicit verbal and written informed consent. The legislation would have, however, allowed for health care providers to override the ban if there was a significant and immediate medical emergency.

While drug and alcohol use while pregnant can present complications for a newborn, nonconsensual drug testing of pregnant people doesn’t solve the issue at hand. It erodes trust between the health care provider and the patient, a core tenet in any health care relationship. And it does nothing to treat addiction as the disease that it is. This practice has been shown to force pregnant people to delay prenatal care, afraid of the potential criminal consequences of being drug tested against their will. Moreover, nonconsensual drug testing could trap the birthing parent in a web of criminalization that, at best, hinders family bonding, and at worst, irrevocably tears families apart — all because of a disease.

Mandatory, nonconsensual drug testing has put more than 70,000 pregnant people in 21 states into the criminal legal system over a six-year period, according to a landmark study by the Marshall Project, and that is likely a significant undercount. This violation criminalizes pregnant people who are dealing with addiction. It does nothing to treat their addiction or support them and their newborn as they transition to this next phase of life. Instead, for too many pregnant people, it can tear their family apart at the most fragile time and force Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement, which can make recovery for birthing people even less likely in the wake of trauma.

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