Published: 14:21 BST, 12 August 2026 | Updated: 15:39 BST, 12 August 2026
In public, Dr Anthony Fauci told everyone there were 'no red flags' suggesting that COVID vaccines were a risk for pregnant women.
Behind closed doors, however, a newly-released batch of messages has revealed he may have privately doubted this assessment.
The release of the texts sparked a firestorm about what Fauci knew and how much he relayed to the public and re-ignited a major debate over the safety of COVID vaccines for pregnant women and prompted scores of people to come forward saying they suffered a miscarriage after receiving them.
Leading the voices were TV personality Meghan McCain, who said she suffered a miscarriage during the pandemic and billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who said his wife Neri Oxman had lost seven pregnancies. However, neither one specified whether the miscarriages happened after a COVID vaccination.
Online, other women were also quick to share their stories.
'I miscarried at 12 weeks just five days after a [COVID] booster,' one wrote, while a second added, 'my daughter, who was forced to get the vaccine because of her job, lost her second baby at 15 weeks. Words fail me right now.'
The alleged increased risk of miscarriage following the COVID vaccination stems from a 2021 study, which was later revealed to have a flawed design and been misinterpreted.
Critics argued that among women who were vaccinated during the first trimester, the available data implied an approximately 82 percent miscarriage rate.
However, the authors later acknowledged a problem with the way the original paper presented the miscarriage calculation and in 2021, the CDC said the 82 percent calculation was 'not an appropriate calculation based on the data available.' That was because, in the paper it was based on, more than 1,000 pregnancies were still ongoing and their outcomes weren't yet known.
Dr Anthony Fauci, pictured last month, has been revealed to have had reservations about suggestions that COVID vaccines were safe for pregnant women
Additionally, the authors of the study in their published response acknowledged that their original 82 percent denominator wasn't appropriate for calculating a risk estimate, but also explained that follow-up was missing for most women vaccinated early in pregnancy.
In other words, the data necessary to calculate the early-pregnancy miscarriage rate simply weren't available yet.
Now, further research and separate studies have found the COVID vaccine is safe for pregnant women and there is no evidence that vaccines cause or increase the risk of miscarriages.
Current estimates suggest about 10 to 20 percent of all pregnancies in the US end in a miscarriage, the loss of a pregnancy before 20 weeks, according to the Mayo Clinic, although experts say the number is likely higher because many miscarriages go unreported.