In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio. A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
A study today finds no increase in autism rates in babies born to mothers who received COVID-19 vaccines just before or during pregnancy, compared with children of unvaccinated moms.
The authors of the study, who presented their findings at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine 2026 Pregnancy Meeting, told CIDRAP News they hope the research will help dispel myths about COVID-19 vaccines, which multiple studies have found to be safe and effective during pregnancy.
Half of the 434 children in the study, conducted at 14 medical facilities from May 2024 to March 2025, were born to mothers who received at least one dose of an mRNA vaccine during or within 30 days before pregnancy. The other half of the children in the study were born to mothers who weren’t vaccinated before or during pregnancy.
Researchers evaluated toddlers between the ages of 18 months and 30 months for signs of autism using four standard screenings: the Ages and Stages Questionnaire Version 3 (ASQ-3), the Child Behavior Checklist, the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, and the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire. None of these measures are used to make a definitive diagnosis of autism, but they can indicate a need for further testing.
When the researchers compared the scores on all four screening assessments, they found no significant differences between the children born to vaccinated mothers and those born to unvaccinated mothers.
“The fact that there were no differences on all four of these outcomes is evidence that COVID vaccination does not result in developmental concerns for most children,” said Alycia Halladay, PhD, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, who was not involved in the new study. “For people who are worried that taking the COVID vaccine during pregnancy may cause autism, the study is pretty clear, convincing evidence that it does not.”
The authors of the study said its results are reassuring.
“We found no evidence in our study or in other studies that [the COVID] vaccine causes harm to the children,” said George R. Saade, MD, the new study’s first author and professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University.
