A board-certified OB/GYN and medical school professor refused to give a direct answer to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who repeatedly asked her if men can get pregnant during a Congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Dr. Nisha Verma, an OB/GYN representing Physicians for Reproductive Health, refused to give a “yes or no” answer to the question first raised by Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) and again by Hawley because she wasn’t certain what the “goal” was behind the question.
“I do take care of patients with different identities,” Verma told Hawley.
“I take care of many women. I take care of people with different identities. And so that’s where I paused.”
Hawley shared that the “goal” of the question is “just the truth” and to “establish a biological reality.”
Verma said that she treats patients that “don’t identify as women” and that using “yes or no” questions is “a political tool.” Verma accused Hawley of reducing the “complexity” of the matter.
“It’s not complex,” Hawley said. “I’m trying to get to an answer, and I’m trying to test, frankly, your veracity as a medical professional and as a scientist, can men get pregnant?”
The two went around in circles until Verma called Hawley’s line of questioning “polarizing and pushing.”
In response, Hawley pointed out that the whole purpose of the hearing centered around the safety of abortion pills for women — the only sex which can get pregnant. Hawley said Verma’s failure to recognize this biological reality raises questions as to if she and other medical professionals advocating for the safety of abortion pills can be trusted.
“There’s a difference between biological men and biological women,” Hawley said. “I just, I don’t know how we can take you seriously and your claims to be a person of science, if you won’t level with this on this basic issue.”
Verma once again condemned the use of “polarized language.”
“I am a person of science, and I’m also someone here who’s here to represent the complex experiences of my patients, and I don’t think polarized languages, language or questions serve that goal. I don’t think they serve the American,” Verma said before being cut off by Hawley.
“It is not polarizing to say that women are a biological reality and should be treated and protected as such; that is not polarizing. That is truth,” said Hawley.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on medical abortion bills comes just a day after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases centered around state laws banning biological boys, who identify as female, from competing in women’ s sports. Supporters of the ban say restrictions on transgender athletes from competing with women are based upon biological differences between the two sexes, in which men have a physiological advantage over female athetes.
