Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director (CDC) Rochelle Walensky came under fire Thursday for using the phrase “pregnant people” while recommending women getting the highly effective COVID-19 vaccine.
“The rise in cases, vaccine hesitancy, and the increased risk of severe illness for pregnant people make vaccination against #COVID19 more urgent than ever. Read why @CDCgov recommends that pregnant people should be vaccinated against COVID-19,” Walensky tweeted, with a link to the CDC website.
“I’ve never met a man tough enough to survive pregnancy and childbirth,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. told Fox News. “The recent movement to erase women is disturbing, and has made its way into our bureaucracy.”
“Every single ‘pregnant person’ is a woman. Always, forever, and unconditionally. I’m not playing along,” “Relatable” podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey tweeted. Stuckey was briefly suspended from Twitter last week for saying a transgender female Olympic athlete who was born male was “still a man.”
Other critics wondered what authority the CDC had to lead on science when theirs seemed to be so flawed.
The CDC has reported there are severe risks to pregnant women and their unborn children if they contract COVID-19, while they’ve found no increased risk of miscarriage for women who get vaccinated.
The CDC has been ripped as of late for issuing confusing guidance throughout the pandemic. Last month, people of all political stripes were outraged after the agency revised its mask guidance to announce that fully vaccinated individuals should return to wearing one indoors and there should be universal masking in schools in light of the spread of the delta variant.