" Of course, pregnant women are no less in need of safe, effective medical treatments than anyone else. Each year, over 400,000 women in the United States battle significant illnesses while pregnant. And many women have chronic conditions, from hypertension to autoimmune diseases to depression, that they must manage with medications. As bioethicist Francoise Baylis wrote in a 2010 Nature article, 'Pregnant women get sick, and sick women get pregnant.' Indeed, 90 percent of women take some medication during pregnancy, and about 70 percent take a prescription drug, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The average woman receives 1.3 prescriptions per obstetric visit, and nearly two-thirds of women use four to five medications during pregnancy and labor.

But with little actual research to go on, doctors are simply guessing at how drugs will affect a pregnant body, and their best predictions can be disastrously off. "

― Maya Dusenbery , Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick