Witness Rightly Calls Out Josh Hawley’s Transphobia During Senate Abortion Hearing

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday to discuss the legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Obviously, it would be great if the Senate could advance even a single piece of legislation instead of just talking about these issues but thanks to the filibuster, that’s not going to happen any time soon. Even still, the hearing seems to have been worth having, if for no other reason that to watch Josh Hawley get his transphobic ass handed to him by a witness.

When it came time for Hawley to ask questions of the witnesses, he started off by asking Professor Khiara Bridges, a law professor from UC Berkeley, to “clear one thing up” for him, and that’s her previous use of the term “people with a capacity for pregnancy.” “Would that be women?” Hawley quipped.

Bridges responded to Hawley’s feigned ignorance with composure, telling him, “Many women, cis women, have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people who are capable of pregnancy.”

“So this isn’t really a women’s right issue,” Hawley said, again continuing with his obviously disengenuous charade, pushing the false and pernicious narrative that women are being “erased” from conversations around abortion.

“We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups,” Bridges said with an excessively patient smile. “Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.” She then went on to call him out on what he was doing.

“I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them,” Bridges said.

“Wow,” Hawley responded with fake shock. “You’re saying that I’m opening people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who can have pregnancies?” Bridges replied with statistics on the disproportionate number of trans people who attempt suicide. “Because of my line of questioning?” Hawley asked. “So we can’t talk about it?”

“Because denying trans people exist, and pretending not to know they exist, is dangerous,” Bridges said. Hawley continued to act confused about why she was saying he was pretending trans people exist but Bridges refused to let him interrupt her and when she straight-up asked him, “Do you believe that men can get pregnant?” he scoffed and said no. Which is denying that trans men exist, just as Bridges was saying.

She ended by telling him he he should join her class sometime, saying “You might learn a lot.” In addition to the clip above, you can watch their full exchange below, which I highly recommend doing. It was a thing of beauty.

(image: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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