The other night, around the same time that President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were starting a press conference blaming use of acetaminophen in pregnancy for autism, I took two extra-strength acetaminophen.

I took them because I’m eight months pregnant and my pelvic joints are separating in the back. This will hopefully help me deliver my baby successfully, but right now all it does is cause excruciating pain when I move (it turns out your pelvis is pretty central to any movement you might make). Sometimes, if I know I’m going to be out and about, I use acetaminophen to take the edge off.

Trump encouraged pregnant women to “fight like hell” not to to take acetaminophen and to “tough it out” when in pain. I wonder how long he could “tough it out” if his pelvic joints started separating. Or he developed plantar fasciitis. Or if he had round ligament pain.

Pointless suffering does not make you a better or more moral mother. In fact, being in pain will negatively affect the fetus because your body is flooding with stress hormones like cortisol. I don’t expect the political party that wants to force women through pregnancy against their will to care about women’s pain. But I do.

My mom, as a parent, was a big believer in “putting your own oxygen mask on first” — that is, if you aren’t meeting your own needs and tending to your own well-being, you won’t be as good as a mother as you could be otherwise. And, quite frankly, I trust my mom’s parenting advice more than theirs.

Acetaminophen is one of the most studied drugs in the world. Every major medical group considers it safe to use during pregnancy. My OB-GYN, who went to medical school and can actually pronounce the word “acetaminophen,” recommended it to me. On a personal level, it’s one of the only pain medications I can safely take, on account of only having one kidney —acetaminophen metabolizes through the liver.

If I were to start out a column by straight up lying about science and health, my editor would cut my column, or at least take out all the lies. Unfortunately when you’re president, apparently you can do whatever you want and everyone has to pay attention to your pet conspiracy theory of the week.

It’s funny how every major theory of autism’s cause blames mothers. The first hypothesis was that “refrigerator mothers” caused autism by not giving their babies enough affection. In addition to being scientifically stupid and neanderthal levels of sexist, it’s also a personally offensive hypothesis to me.

My mom was the exact opposite of a refrigerator mother. If a “woodstove mother” is a thing, that is what she would be. You couldn’t find a more loving, attentive and affectionate mother anywhere … and I still ended up with social difficulties, sensory sensitives and restricted and repetitive behavior patterns.

Then it was vaccines (and who takes kids to their well-child visits for their shots? I think we know which parent does most of the work there). Now it’s Tylenol. I suppose the next grand scientific theory will somehow be working moms give their kids autism, somehow.

The actual science available points to a largely genetic component to autism. I guess the government doesn’t want to talk about that because then maybe it could be a man’s fault, instead of just the mother’s. But this has been evident from the very beginning of scientific study of autism.

I’ve read the first published medical paper on autism in America: “Autistic disturbances of affective contact,” written by Leo Kanner in 1943. It contains 11 case studies of young children with autism, including Case #1, Donald Triplett, the first person ever officially diagnosed with autism. (He passed away in 2023, age 89, after a long and happy life as a beloved community member.)

You know what jumps out to me? Donald was brought to Dr. Kanner’s attention when Don’s father sent Dr. Kanner “a 33-page typewritten letter filled with much obsessive detail” about the history and background of 5-year-old Don’s life. Obsessive attention to detail focused on a narrow subject of interest? Hmm. Fascinating. Definitely not autistic in the slightest.

And as you go through the paper, these little details about the parents keep popping out. One patient’s father was “mildly obsessive; as a child he did not talk until late.” (Delayed or, sometimes, very early development of speech can be symptomatic of autism.)

Another case study has a mother who brought with her “copious notes that indicated obsessive preoccupation attention with details” and a father who “was very much immersed in his work, almost entirely to the exclusion of social contacts.”

I’m not saying all these parents were on the autism spectrum. But I’d bet money that if they were around today and were assessed by the same psychological team I was, some of them would absolutely meet the diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum disorder.

If my son is autistic, it won’t be because I used acetaminophen or ate red dye #4 or watched too many Instagram videos while I was pregnant with him. It will be because I am his mother and I have autism.

I’m not worried about my son having autism. I do worry about him having high support needs, regardless of what causes them, but not because I think needing extra support is a bad thing or a moral failing on anyone’s part — I worry because our country has basically no safety net, so everything falls on individual families.

If Trump and RFK Jr. actually cared about kids with autism and their families, they wouldn’t be cutting Medicaid. They’d be massively expanding and investing in community-based support services. But no, they’ve decided to hawk an unproven supplement (that a bunch of their friends and donors just so happen to sell) as a “cure.”

Autism isn’t some horrible disease. Expectant parents don’t need to be afraid of it. Does it come with challenges? Of course. And some of those challenges can be quite severe for both the autistic person and their families.

As a society we absolutely must invest more in support services. But with those proper supports and accommodations, autistic people can live long, happy, meaningful lives.

Part of the reason I was diagnosed so late was because I grew up in such a supportive environment conducive to my flourishing that nobody really noticed or cared that I had those odd, spectrum-y behaviors.

Sometimes I just want to take these people by the collar and shake them a bit and yell “I have autism and it’s not that big a deal!” And if there was a “cure” that would change me from autistic to neurotypical, I wouldn’t take it.