Fauci texts release revives false claims linking Covid-19 vaccination, miscarriages

"Dr. Fauci publicly BOASTED that tens of thousands of pregnant women took the COVID vaccine, with 'no red flags' Privately, he knew it was likely causing MISCARRIAGES," says an August 11, 2026 X post from Eric Daughtery of the website Right Line News. "PRISON!!!!"

The post comes after Republican US Senator Rand Paul released thousands of pages of the immunologist's personal diary and, along with vaccine-skeptic Republican Senator Ron Johnson, published text messages obtained from Fauci's government-issued phone (archived here and here). 

Paul is spearheading an initiative in the Senate Homeland Security Committee to probe the origins of Covid-19 and investigate Fauci, who spent decades working as one of America's top infectious disease experts in the United States under both President Donald Trump and former president Joe Biden.

Daugherty's post includes a screenshot from a January 25, 2021 text chain about Covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy between Fauci, Vivek Murthy, who was reappointed Surgeon General in March 2021, and then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Rochelle Walensky (archived here, here and here).

The message from Fauci said: "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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Screenshot of an X post taken August 13, 2026

Multiple other posts highlighting the same text spread across social media platforms. 

Pregnant people have historically been excluded from initial safety trials for new drugs and vaccines.

This was the case as Pfizer and Moderna tested their Covid-19 shots. As a result, the safety data available to Fauci and other public health officials remained limited in January 2021 when the text conversation about a theoretical, unproven risk took place. 

The same text chain also included a January 26 message in which Fauci pointed out that "no issues" had arisen among more than 10,000 pregnant people who had been vaccinated by then. He also said animal toxicology studies had not raised any "red flags."

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Screenshot taken August 13, 2026 of a text message released by Ron Johnson and Rand Paul

Now there is more than five years' worth of extensive information demonstrating that the shots are not associated with elevated miscarriage risk (archived here). 

Despite controversial changes to the agency's vaccine recommendations in 2025 under vaccine-skeptic Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the CDC website continues to say as of August 13, 2026: "Studies have shown no increased risk for complications like miscarriage, preterm delivery, stillbirth, or birth defects" (archived here and here).  

For example, one 2023 paper examining pregnancies in the United States and Canada found that "Covid-19 vaccination in either partner at any time before conception is not associated with an increased rate of miscarriage" (archived here).

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, meanwhile, points on its website to "a 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of 177 studies involving 631,957 pregnant individuals found no safety concerns related to Covid-19 vaccination in pregnancy" (archived here and here). 

The group "continues to recommend that all pregnant and lactating individuals receive an updated Covid-19 vaccine or 'booster.'"

Miscarriage rate

Comments Johnson made on Fox News and other posts on social media, including from conservative influencer Nick Sortor and US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, claimed Fauci was hiding a known "82 percent miscarriage rate" in people vaccinated during the first trimester. 

The 82 percent figure's source appears to be a submission to the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations by James Thorp, an American gynecologist whom AFP and others have repeatedly fact-checked for spreading falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccination (archived here).

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Screenshot of an X post taken August 12, 2026

In his submission, Thorp referenced an April 21, 2021 analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine that examined pregnant participants enrolled in the US government's V-safe registry, as the Covid-19 vaccines were first becoming widely available (archived here).

The authors initially reported a pregnancy loss rate of 12.6 percent -- in line with what had previously been observed in the general population, where about 15 to 20 percent of pregnancies end in a miscarriage, with most occurring in the first 12 weeks (archived here and here).

The 82 percent figure, meanwhile, comes from what experts said was faulty math involving the paper's raw data. It does not appear in the publication, but was calculated by excluding from the denominator people who were still pregnant or who received the shot during the third trimester. This misrepresented the actual risk, according to experts AFP spoke with in 2021.

The paper's authors released updated data in September 2021 and said the risk of miscarriage continued to be in line with that prior to the pandemic (archived here). 

Several doctors have since pointed out that the live birth rates would have fallen dramatically if 82 percent of pregnant people who were vaccinated went on to suffer miscarriages (archived here and here). This is not borne out by population data in the United States or elsewhere. 

Rather, the risk of pregnancy complications is more closely associated with Covid-19 infection (archived here and here).

The Mayo Clinic says pregnancy "raises the risk of severe Covid-19," while the World Health Organization points to infections causing "an increased likelihood of preterm birth" (archived here and here).

Find more of AFP's reporting on vaccine misinformation here.