By Dr Aishling McMorrow.
At the recent memorial service for Charlie Kirk, the tone was sombre as his wife spoke of her forgiveness of the alleged killer of her husband. Erika Kirk told the crowds of tens of thousands that ‘the answer to hate is not hate.’ This tone and messaging rapidly disintegrated as President Trump took to the stage. After telling Erika she was wrong, and that he personally hated his enemies, Trump decided that this celebration of life was the right moment to drop hints about an impending ‘amazing’ announcement on autism. Even the most fervent MAGA supporter had cause to be nervous; this is the President, after all, that floated the idea of self-injection with bleach as a cure for covid-19.
What followed the next day was a proclamation that fudged medical research and threw all caution to the wind: pregnant women taking paracetamol cause autism in their unborn children. Aside from Trump’s dangerous foray, once again, into medical advice, his interest in this false causation goes beyond his campaign promise to “cure” autism. There is both political precedent and political capital for Trump and his cronies to place the actions of the mother as solely to “blame” for autism.
I am not here to debate whether pregnant women should take paracetamol or not. That is not my area of expertise; a statement which Trump should really become more comfortable with. Rather, the long history of placing mothers as the single causal factor for not only their children’s problems, but societal problems, is my area of interest. Named as mother blaming, mothers have always been scapegoated in both policy and practice and placed within a deficit model where there is no right way to be a mother. Crucially, what mother blaming has enabled is the punishment of women, firstly, and the absolving of flawed political systems, secondly. Single mothers have been falsely linked to children’s underperformance in schools, crime rates, and even school shootings. The lack of government investment, political, and civic support to these women going unnoticed and unmentioned. Or, more pertinently, in the 1940s, mothers, after centuries of being told that they were too emotional, were suddenly the cause for autism. ‘Refrigerator mothers’ who were imagined as cold and unemotional were told that they had triggered autism in their children. This concept persisted for twenty years and both isolated and punished these mothers unnecessarily.
But blaming women isn’t just about falsely attributed guilt, it also has serious, sometimes deadly, implications. In the United States, for example, research has long shown how African American women are typecast as bad mothers. Black feminism has detailed how the perception of these women as irresponsible mothers has real-world consequences such as welfare reforms that disproportionately punish this group. Of course, that is if these women, firstly, survive both the adverse health outcomes and maternal mortality rates that they are subjected to. For women of colour in the US, motherhood is less a cause for celebration and more of a metric against which punishment is justified and enacted.
Ireland is not immune to this problem either. While the days of institutionalising unmarried mothers may seem like a long time ago, the last mother-and-baby home only shut its doors in 1998. As we speak, forensic archaeologists are excavating a septic tank-cum-mass grave for children at one of these former homes. Ireland has by no means a clean bill of health when it comes to the deadly consequences of mother blame.
Trump’s campaign and policies hinge upon the oppression of women. From manipulating the Supreme Court judges to overturn Roe vs Wade, to culling equality, diversity, and inclusion programmes, there has been a concerted attack on the protections that are offered to women’s rights. These are just some of the high-profile attacks, much more has flown under the radar, such as the deletion of medically sound information on reproductive rights and freezing funding for clinics that offer breast and cervical cancer screenings. We are witnessing the obscene outcomes of a presidency based on the hatred of women. This year, Adriana Smith in Georgia was kept on life support for over four months, against the wishes of her family, to try to keep alive her pregnancy, despite being brain-dead. Women’s bodies have been reduced to mere incubators under Trump’s presidency. All while being told to ‘fight like hell’ to not take the safest and most widely researched pain reliever during their pregnancy.
It should go without saying – and yet here we are – that the idea of a cause and cure for autism is deeply insulting to the many people that celebrate and find joy in neurodivergence. Moreover, autism exists on a spectrum, and any talk, or advice, relating to cause and solution should mirror this diversity also. The lack of nuance from Trump and his administration around this issue, rather than just par for course, is part of a broader political strategy. Autism is widely held to be a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors and so singularly positing a pregnant mother’s pain relief as the sole cause, speaks less of sound science and more of misogyny.
Let us be under no illusion, Trump hailing this as the biggest news in medical history ever, is more than just his stereotypical hyperbole. He is only too happy to find a new reason to blame women.
Image courtesy of a Creative Commons License with Photo by David Everett Strickler.