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Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on the legal impact of the end of Roe v. Wade, was accused by a congressional witness of using a transphobic line of questioning.
Hawley asked UC Berkeley law professor Hiara M. Bridges who she was talking about when she talked about “people with the capacity to become pregnant.”
“Are those women?” Hawley asked.
Bridges, who during the hearing defended access to abortion care for all people who are at risk of pregnancy, explained that cisgender women, trans men and non-binary people can get pregnant.
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“Many cis women have the ability to get pregnant. A lot of cis women don’t have the ability to get pregnant,” Bridges said. “There are trans men who can get pregnant as well as non-binary people who can get pregnant.”
“So this isn’t really a women’s rights issue?” Hawley replied.
Bridges explained to Hawley that the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Rowe affects cisgender women as well as other groups. Those things, she said, are not mutually exclusive.
Some gender and reproductive rights experts use gender-neutral terms, including “people of childbearing potential” and “pregnant people” when talking about these issues, which helps illustrate that not only cisgender women have the ability to conceive – and cisgender women aren’t the only ones affected by decisions to limit reproductive health care.
However, Hawley redoubled his questioning by asking Bridges what the substance of her argument was.
Bridge then told the senator that his line of questioning was transphobic because he refused to acknowledge transgender people.
“It opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them,” Bridges told Hawley.
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A skeptical Hawley then asked how his questioning could lead to violence. Bridges responded by noting that 1 in 5 transgender people commit suicide.
According to a 2021 survey by the Trevor Project, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ rights, more than half of transgender and non-binary youth in the country have seriously considered a suicide attempt in the past year. The National Center for Transgender Equality also reported that more than 1 in 4 transgender people have faced a bias-motivated attack. During the pandemic alone, calls to the Trans Lifeline — a crisis hotline staffed by transgender people — have increased by 40 percent.
“Do you believe men can get pregnant?” Bridges then asked Hawley.
“No, I don’t think so,” replied the senator.
“So you deny the existence of trans people,” Bridges said.
As the confrontation escalated, Hawley asked Bridges if this was how she ran her classroom, telling students that they were opening people up “to violence.”
“We have a good time in my class,” Bridges replied. “You should join. You can learn a lot.
“I’ll learn a lot,” Hawley replied mockingly. “I learned a lot from this exchange.”
The hearing then moved on to another witness. But later Tuesday, Hawley shared a clip of the interaction on Twitter, accusing Democrats of being unwilling to engage in the debate.
“To today’s left, disagreeing with them = violence,” Hawley said in the tweet. “So you don’t have to disagree.”
Bridges did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the exchange.
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