Meet the OB-GYNs fighting back against Trump’s ‘guerrilla war on science’

Key Highlights

• But the Connecticut-based physician at Yale University School of Medicine never predicted that things would get this dire. As the premier membership group for US-based OB-GYNs, ACOG provides its more than 62,000 members with clinical guidance, educational opportunities and career help.
• It also advocates for abortion rights – a stance that has long made the organization far more politically active than many other major medical societies.
• And in the last year, the nonpartisan organization has become a leading voice in the fight against Donald Trump’s anti-science crusade and the US government’s embrace of medical misinformation, especially on the topic of pregnancy and childbirth. After Trump suggested, without sound evidence, that women who take Tylenol during pregnancy risk causing autism in their children, Fleishman called such suggestions “highly unsettling”.
• After the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened a panel focused on the risks of taking antidepressants during pregnancy, Fleischman slammed it as “alarmingly unbalanced”.
• And after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped recommending Covid vaccines for pregnant women, Fleischman accused its vaccine advisory committee of failing to follow “longstanding tradition of robust, unbiased review of reputable scientific evidence”. Steven Fleischman, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.