When the COVID-19 vaccines first hit the market, there was little to no vaccine safety data for pregnant women. That’s because the manufacturers didn’t test the vaccines on this population, a move that spoke to a long-lived trend in America's healthcare system in which pregnant women are actively excluded from the clinical vaccine trials and critical research in healthcare.
At the time, experts told Salon that the move blatantly failed to protect pregnant women, especially those who were frontline workers. It also fueled vaccine hesitancy, which was already a problem within the pregnant and non-pregnant community.
