Becoming a mother means that, whether pregnant or breastfeeding, every medical decision is made on behalf of at least two people. The medical community has led a war propaganda-level campaign against sushi, bologna, and bubble baths in consideration of this fact but has been less careful about recommending the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Because COVID-19 is not an urgent threat to most babies and studies have yet to prove the vaccine is safe for breastfeeding mothers and their babies, the near-universal pressure for them to get vaccinated is best interpreted as politically motivated patient exploitation.
COVID-19 is not and has not been a significant threat to infants via breast milk or other forms of transmission. The American Academy of Pediatrics said breast milk from a COVID-19-positive mother is still safe for her infant to consume. Children ages 0-4 accounted for only 7.4% of coronavirus cases between ages 0-24 in 2020, an age group already at lower risk than older portions of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most newborns who contract the virus have mild or no symptoms. Basically, science says you could hock a COVID-19-laced loogie on your baby’s head and he’ll be OK.
But rather than emphasizing that a breastfeeding mother’s choice to get vaccinated or not should be up to her discretion, the CDC still recommends that breastfeeding women should receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said the vaccine is safe for breastfeeding women. The American Academy of Pediatrics said the same. Every board, panel, and college of anything having to do with children has said the vaccine is safe for breastfeeding women and that they should probably get it.
But very little testing has been done to support such a claim. Moderna and Pfizer vaccine trials in 2020 did not include pregnant and nursing women. Later in 2021, the University of California, San Francisco, published a study that concluded COVID-19 mRNA vaccines did not appear in breast milk, but only seven women participated. Science journal Nature reported the same year that the mRNA vaccines were “extremely unlikely” to pass through breast milk, a statement not based on any study but on the vaccines’ design.
New findings do suggest that the COVID-19 vaccines do not pass through breast milk. The Journal of the American Medical Association released a study in September 2022 that reported trace amounts of the mRNA vaccines were detected in breast milk only in the 48 hours following vaccination. But the report admitted that “caution is warranted.” Joy of joys, the same caution that could get someone de-platformed or fired a year ago has been deemed “warranted.” (This study also happened to come out around the same time the legacy media decided it was OK to suggest that the vaccine might affect women’s periods.)
Some might point out that just because the vaccine can pass through breast milk doesn’t mean that it actually harms nursing babies. It’s hard to argue that the vaccine is a bad idea for breastfeeding mothers when, at worst, a tiny amount of the vaccine may get into milk and might affect babies negatively.
But this thinking belies a bias toward medical intervention. The message is that a good patient will accept any recommendation unless it is proven harmful. It’s not enough just to have reservations. Institutional medicine says you need science to say no.
Although there isn’t any proof that the COVID-19 vaccine will pass through breast milk and turn babies everywhere into tannis root-riddled spawns of Satan, there is also little proof that it is completely safe, making the overwhelming pressure on nursing mothers to get vaccinated a little suspect. Is it an accident that the medical community puts such pressure on a demographic as vulnerable to suggestion as new mothers? Perhaps the people who warn against eating cold cuts and recommend experimental treatments in the same breath have something to gain.
Katrina Hutchins is a video editor and mother from Indiana. She formerly worked for the Daily Caller as an associate editor and an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez impersonator.
