the reason you give tetanus vaccine to pregnant women it to prevent neonatal tetanus. Often the cord is cut with dirty scissors or a dirty knife and they put herbs on the cut cord. The result is neonatal tetanus.
If the mom has had a recent tetanus shot, the baby inherits a lot of her anti tetanus antibodies, so doesn’t get the disease.
There has been an urban legend about various vaccines causing miscarriages or sterilizations, but it is just that: An urban legend.
Of course, there have been experimental vaccines that make women sterile that have been tested on African women, and then there is the Depo provera type shots that cause temporary infertility. Those are the reasons that the urban legend started.
But tetanus vaccine causing sterility? Nope. No way.
This vaccine consists in part of an alpha-subunit of ovine luteinizing hormone, beta hCG:alpha oLH) linked to tetanus toxoid (TT) or diphtheria toxoid (DT) as carriers. The vaccine was praised by researchers ten years ago, when it first was discovered that "women of proven fertility leading active sexual life were protected from becoming pregnant."
I.e. thousands of women getting tetanus shots were --- so to speak ---as an added bonus at no extra cost (!!!)---- rendered temporarily or permanently sterile without all that complicated business of having to get their consent...
Because it’s easier and cheaper to vaccinate EVERY SINGLE FEMALE between the ages of 14 and 49 than it is to instruct the midwives to dip the scissors in bleach (they even have that in Kenya these days!) prior to cutting the cord.
20 years ago a good friend of mine stepped on a rusty nail during her 8th month of pregnancy. She rushed to her OB for a tetanus shot and was told absolutely not, tetanus toxoid exposure was detrimental to the fetus. They cleaned the wound very carefully and thoroughly and mom and baby somehow managed to survive the perilous experience...
And they are vaccinating every woman, not just the pregnant ones.
And this pressing medical issue (neonatal tetanus) is far more important to fix than say, clean drinking water or adequate disposal of human waste. I’m sure neonatal tetanus kills FAR more women and children than dirty unclean drinking water...