Did 920 women lose their unborn babies after getting vaccinated? No, there's no evidence that's true: A post making the claim says the data is from the United Kingdom but does not cite a source. It further claims that 571 women in the United States had a miscarriage after getting the COVID-19 shot. For that number, the post relies on VAERS, an unverified list of vaccine reaction reports to which anyone can add an item. It's not considered sufficient evidence to establish whether an adverse event, such as a miscarriage, was caused by a vaccine.
The claim appeared in an Instagram post (archived here) published on June 3, 2021. The post opened: "Crimes against humanity 😞💔 This data is from the U.K. For those who don't believe it to be true you can go to www.openvaers.com and read about the 571 miscarriages following the Covid vax that have been reported in the U.S." The post also included what looked to be the top of an article, which had the following headline:
920 Women Lose Their Unborn Babies After Getting Vaccinated
Users on social media saw this at the time of writing:
The article cited in the post is this article, published by The True Defender. Despite the post and the story's headline, there is no source for the claim about the 920 U.K. women in the article.
Instead, the article talks about VAERS, which is a passive U.S. reporting system. Anyone can file a report. The reports are not verified and are not sufficient evidence to establish whether an adverse event, such as a miscarriage, was caused by a vaccine. The website for VAERS makes clear the system's uses and limitations. The site reads:
When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.
In other words, there's no evidence to support the claims made in the Instagram post, linking miscarriages and the COVID-19 vaccines.
Although there is still limited information on the safety of the shot during pregnancy, the data collected so far have not identified "any safety concerns for pregnant people who were vaccinated or for their babies." That's according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which says on its website that experts believe the vaccines are unlikely to pose a risk to pregnant people, based on what doctors know about how the vaccines work in the body. The CDC also notes that pregnant people are at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 and that pregnant women with the disease are at increased risk of preterm birth, compared with pregnant women without COVID-19.
As Lead Stories has reported previously, it's statistically inevitable that some people will get sick and die of unrelated causes after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Similarly, some pregnant women may miscarry after getting the shot for reasons that are unrelated to the vaccine. It's been estimated that roughly one in eight pregnancies end in miscarriage, among people who know they're pregnant.
