Ted Cruz

LOADINGERROR LOADING

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) faced backlash on Wednesday after posting a preview of his upcoming podcast episode with radio host Ben Ferguson that discusses recent claims that Dr. Anthony Fauci withheld information about the theoretical risks of the COVID vaccine for pregnant women.

In a post on X, Cruz wrote, “We now have the receipts: Dr. Fauci and Pfizer knew the second dose of the COVID vaccine carried an 82% risk of miscarriage for women in their first trimester.”

Advertisement

Cruz’s claim is false, according to infectious disease experts and pregnancy health organizations.

The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, which represents high-risk pregnancy experts, referred HuffPost to its September 2025 statement that research “shows there is no increased risk for miscarriage, preterm delivery … from COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy.”

Cruz’s accusation comes after Republican senators released text messages from January 2021 between Fauci, former Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky and former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. In the texts, Fauci said the second COVID-19 vaccine “theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester” around the time he publicly said there were “no red flags” if pregnant women got the vaccine.

Cruz previously claimed that the COVID vaccine is unsafe for pregnant people, even after being presented with evidence disproving it.

Cruz has previously claimed that the COVID vaccine was dangerous for pregnant individuals. As a member of the Joint Economic Committee in April 2021, he questioned infectious disease physician Dr. Celine Gounder at a hearing on vaccines. Gounder served on the COVID-19 advisory board during the Biden administration and is a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the New York University School of Medicine & Bellevue Hospital.

According to the hearing transcript, Gounder disagreed with Cruz’s claim that pregnant women weren’t recommended to get vaccinated, and economist Alexander Tabarrok corrected Cruz on the spot, saying, “The recommendation actually is that pregnant women are — should be vaccinated.”

“Cruz asked me for the evidence in April 2021, and I sent it to his committee,” Gounder told HuffPost. “The New England Journal of Medicine paper I cited in that answer is the paper his 82% is drawn from.”

Advertisement

Where does the 82% statistic Cruz mentions in the recent podcast even come from?

The NEJM study focused on 3,958 pregnant women in different trimesters of their pregnancies in the CDC’s V-safe registry, a vaccine safety monitoring program that monitors any side effects from shots through quick, self-reported check-ins.

Of those women, 827 completed their pregnancies during the study period, either through a live birth (712 pregnancies), miscarriage (104 pregnancies) or another outcome like a stillbirth or ectopic pregnancy (11 pregnancies). The rest of the women in the study were still pregnant at the conclusion of the study period.

Advertisement

The 82% risk cited in Cruz’s post stems from a debunked reader argument in a since-deleted letter to NEJM that said that because 700 participants in the study had received their first COVID vaccine during their third trimester, they should be excluded from the final count, since a miscarriage, by definition, occurs before the 20-week mark.

“Someone took the 827 completed pregnancies in that registry, removed the 700 women who were vaccinated in the third trimester and had healthy babies, and divided by what was left,” Gounder explained. In other words, the figure completely disregarded most of the participants in the study.

The NEJM study’s authors additionally pointed out that early data collection oversamples losses for pregnant women — a common issue in pregnancy-safety research.

Advertisement

“Fauci sent that text [to Walensky and Murthy] in January 2021,” Gounder told HuffPost. “The study ... ran in the New England Journal of Medicine that April, and CDC published the follow-up analysis in September.”

The CDC’s 2021 follow-up study doubled down on disproving this 82% theory. It followed 2,456 women who got vaccinated before conception or before 20 weeks of pregnancy. The average miscarriage rate for pregnancy in general is usually cited as being between 11% and 22%, and 14% of the women in the CDC’s study reported a miscarriage.

In terms of why Fauci was texting about concerns with Walensky and Murthy, Gounder argues it’s because drugmakers were keeping pregnant women out of the COVID vaccine trials.

Advertisement

“That’s why three federal health officials were texting each other about what to tell women, instead of reading a trial result,” Gounder said.

The invalid 82% miscarriage statistic was also on the congressional record a year ago.

Fauci’s texts aren’t what sparked the reconnection with the 82% claim.

In May 2025, Florida gynecologist Dr. James Thorp testified to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that “raw data” showed an 82% miscarriage rate in “women vaccinated during the first trimester,” using the same recalculation someone used for the NEJM study.

“It is difficult to conceive of a more egregious breach of medical ethics by the government-controlled, medical-industrial complex than the systematic promotion of COVID-19 vaccination to pregnant women,” Thorp said in his testimony.

Advertisement

When Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) published Fauci’s texts on Monday, Johnson’s official statement cited Thorp’s “rebuttal” in the hearing.

Since then, this incorrect percentage has spread widely. In the aftermath of Fauci’s texts, right-wing outlets like PJ Media and The Federalist have referenced the 82%. Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain also mentioned it on Fox Business on Tuesday.

The following night, Fox Business host Elizabeth MacDonald corrected McClain’s remarks.

Why is Pfizer mentioned in Cruz’s comment?

It’s also important to note that Cruz’s mention of Pfizer likely refers to one of the brand’s safety reports from April 2021, which logged 270 voluntary self-reports of adverse vaccine effects from people who were pregnant.

Advertisement

Only in 32 cases did someone follow through with answering questions and keeping Pfizer up to date on their pregnancy results. And of those 32 cases, 26 reported a miscarriage — coming out to 81%. But, again, that is unreliable data since so few people followed up with Pfizer. The methodology doesn’t pan out in the real world.

Although the safety report was neither a peer-reviewed study nor publicly published, Thorp nonetheless referred to Pfizer’s 81% statistic in his testimony to validate the 82% claim.

The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for people who are contemplating pregnancy, are recently pregnant, or are lactating. The group also says that “COVID-19 vaccine safety during pregnancy has been well established,” and cites a 2024 study to validate this.

Advertisement