The war on Tylenol is applied misogyny
By 
One salient fact about both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is that they really, really hate women:
Now the president, who once vowed to be a protector of women “whether they like it or not”, has turned his attention to prenatal care. “Taking Tylenol is, uhhhh, not good,” Trump said on Monday, with his trademark eloquence. He was flanked by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, the guy who told Congress this year that “people shouldn’t take medical advice from me”.
Trump went on to link autism to prenatal exposure to acetaminophen, which is the active ingredient in Tylenol. If you’re feeling poorly while pregnant you should “fight like hell” not to take Tylenol to relieve your pain, the president instructed. Which basically means suffering instead: ibuprofen, for instance, is generally not recommended after week 20 of pregnancy.
“If you can’t tough it out, if you can’t do it, that’s what you’d have to do,” Trump continued. “You’ll take a Tylenol, but it’ll be very sparingly. Can be something that’s very dangerous to the woman’s health, in other words, a fever that’s very, very dangerous, and ideally, a doctor’s decision, because I think you shouldn’t take it and you shouldn’t take it during the entire pregnancy.”
Like everything Trump says, this incoherent quote makes zero sense. But the bottom line here is that the Trump administration is advancing wildly irresponsible guidance. There is no evidence for a causative link between acetaminophen and autism and many experts were aghast at Trump’s statements. Indeed, even the moral vacuum that is JD Vance balked at repeating Trump’s advice, instead urging women to lean on their doctors. And while Trump claimed that there is “no downside” in avoiding Tylenol, an untreated fever during pregnancy could cause problems for the baby.
Trump’s demand that pregnant women “tough it out” is also deeply misogynistic and a reminder of how women’s pain is often misunderstood or ignored. Numerous studies show that the medical establishment takes men’s pain more seriously. A 2022 study from the Journal of the American Heart Association, for example, found that women who visited emergency departments with chest pain waited 29% longer than men to be evaluated.
People whose worldview is dominated by medieval superstitions are likely to adopt complimentary parts of the package.