Anti-vaxxers and the weaponising of pregnant women’s fears

Dr Naomi Smith, a Federation University sociologist who researches wellness and conspiracies, says this is a typical anti-vaxxer “brigading” tactic to make themselves more visible and create the impression there is a debate to be had.

“They’re trolling, but with that comes eyeballs and it creates this murky information atmosphere,” Smith says.

Hardcore anti-vaxxers, who are a minority, aren’t the big problem, Smith says, rather it’s that they can plant seeds of doubt and lead some to not seek out the COVID-19 vaccine.

“It just gunks up the wheels of the public health response,” Smith says. “The pregnancy and early childhood years are a very vulnerable time, and they’re ripe for this form of disruption when there’s so much emphasis on doing everything you can to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby … It actually makes me angry to think anti-vaxxers are targeting women at this time in their lives.”

After the College of Midwives’ posts, health authorities updated their advice in line with new evidence to recommend that the Pfizer vaccine is safe for women who are pregnant, after breastfeeding women already had the green light. The risk of severe COVID-19 is higher for pregnant women who are unvaccinated. And antibodies in the umbilical cord and breast milk following a mother’s vaccination may offer protection to infants.

But while the latest results of the University of Melbourne’s Taking the Pulse of the Nation survey show that vaccine hesitancy in Australia has fallen since the latest Victorian outbreak, it remains high, with just over two-thirds of people willing to be vaccinated. We also know that women are more likely than men not to want a COVID-19 vaccine. More specifically, women in their 30s – child-bearing age – are most likely to hold safety concerns.

“The pregnancy and early childhood years are a very vulnerable time and they’re ripe for this form of disruption.”

Dr Naomi Smith

Anti-vaxxer narratives exploit this, Smith says, by spreading misinformation about vaccines causing not only death and injury (sometimes with outlandish comparisons to Nazi crimes), but also miscarriage, infertility, menstrual issues and genetic abnormalities, all of which health experts say is untrue. Claims that simply being near a vaccinated person is harmful because of “shedding” are also false.

“They’re standard pregnancy fears … and they’re being weaponised,” Smith says. “There’s a lot of really scary discourse.”

The Australian Breastfeeding Association has been stormed on Facebook twice this year by anti-vaxxers for sharing information to breastfeeding women about COVID-19 vaccination.

Senior manager of breastfeeding research Naomi Hull says the association spent up to three days dealing with each incident, concerned that new mothers following the page risked absorbing “unsafe information”.

“It was quite labour-intensive. We removed dangerous comments and violent and aggressive comments,” she says.

Hull believes the pandemic has highlighted the importance of pregnant and breastfeeding women being included in research trials, because having enough hard evidence early on could counter the anti-vaccination camp.

Obstetricians’ social media pages have been ambushed, too. One Melbourne obstetrics and fertility specialist, who asked not to be named out of fear of being targeted again, says her Instagram page – followed mainly by patients – became inundated last week by “truly horrendous” comments, including ones calling her a murderer and likening her to Nazi criminal Josef Mengele. It came after she posted the new COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women.

“Never in my life have I experienced this,” she says. “I tried some respectful debate initially, then I realised it was pointless. It was terrifying. Someone can just trash your reputation out of nasty malevolence.

“Against my better judgment, I took down my post. I might be in the right, but if you’re going to be tortured, there’s no point.”

Dr Katie Attwell, chief investigator of the University of Western Australia’s Coronavax project – which monitors vaccine sentiment online – suspects that the trolling is not simply about trying to convert others.

“They are seeking to speak their truth and address their feelings of betrayal,” she says.

By that, Attwell means that those refusing vaccines tend to feel under siege, and that maternal health spaces should be “theirs”. So a midwifery organisation supporting vaccination feels like a particular affront to a mother who genuinely fears it, Attwell says, because the essence of a midwife is that the most important thing is the mother and child they’re caring for.

Joanne Gray stresses that while midwives always promote what’s best for women and babies, and tend to be pro-vaginal birth, they are also pro-science and vaccination. “We give women choice, give the evidence, and respect that some women will make a different choice,” she says.

“Never in my life have I experienced this … I tried some respectful debate initially, then I realised it was pointless.”

Melbourne obstetrician, anonymous

Anti-vaccination activists commonly sit in sectors of the wellness realm where a natural lifestyle reigns and essential oils and organic food are sold as curative.

Attwell says it’s unsurprising that some women entering motherhood are more vulnerable to vaccine misinformation – “you’re on the whole ‘my body is a temple’ trip, thinking about vitamins and foods and exercise and lifestyle and stopping drinking” – but it’s concerning.

“That pregnancy zone is not just a nine-month thing. You’re getting ready to try, you’re trying, you’re going through IVF, you’re pregnant, you’re breastfeeding. It can be a three to four-year period,” she says.

Sociologist Smith says that the intensity and competitiveness of motherhood in modern society feeds the anti-vaccination problem.

“Anti-vaxxers come in and say ‘you don’t have to take this risk, and there is a whole community of people here to support you’,” she says. “So in a society that critiques women constantly for not being the best possible mother, you can see why women are pushed towards these spaces … even if it’s a choice that’s socially marginalised.”

To combat the problem, Smith believes medical professionals, who rightly deal in facts, need to be better at meeting people in their emotional moments.

“They’re not good at saying ‘I understand your fears, and they’re rational and relatable, but here are things to reassure you’,” she says.

The other issue is preventing people from seeing anti-vaxxer messages on their social media feeds. A spokesperson for Facebook (which also owns Instagram) says the company’s policy is to remove false claims about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. The platforms also have information labels automatically added to posts that discuss vaccines. But of course, misinformation is still being disseminated.

“We know that conversations about vaccines tend to be nuanced, so we’re continuing to work with health experts to make sure that our approach and our policies are in the right place,” the Facebook spokesperson says.

The Australian College of Midwives, at least, says it won’t stop sharing evidence-based messages in support of vaccination, including the new advice for pregnant women. As Gray says: “We won’t pull back from this.”

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