Sen. Josh Hawley grills expert Democrat witness on if men can get pregnant: 'Quite depressing'

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., faced resistance Wednesday when he asked an obstetrician, who was called by Democrats as an expert witness during a U.S. Senate hearing, if men can get pregnant.

During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill about the use of chemical abortion drugs, Hawley was unable to get a straight answer from Dr. Nisha Verma, an OB/GYN who performs abortion procedures and has testified before Congress on the topic in the past.

Sen. Josh @HawleyMO: "Can men get pregnant?"

Dr. Nisha Verma: "I'm not really sure what the goal of the question is."

Hawley: "The goal is just to establish a biological reality...Can men get pregnant?" pic.twitter.com/4egtfZrPgB

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 14, 2026

Referencing an earlier exchange Verma had minutes before with Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., when Verma demurred when she was asked if men can get pregnant, Hawley asked her the same question.

"I wasn't sure I understood your answer to Senator Moody a moment ago. Do you think that men can get pregnant?" Hawley asked, to which Verma replied by claiming she hesitated to answer "because I wasn't sure where the conversation was going or what the goal was."

"I mean, I do take care of patients with different identities," she continued. "I take care of many women. I take care of people with different identities. And so that's where I paused. I think, yeah, I wasn't sure where you were going with that."

Hawley noted that clear thinking about the basic definitions of biological sex is profoundly important, especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court hearing oral arguments Tuesday on two cases related to banning male athletes from competing in girls' sports.

"This is about science and evidence, and I'm asking you. The United States Supreme Court just heard arguments yesterday at great length on this question," he said.

"This is not a hypothetical question. This is not theoretical. It affects real people in their real lives, and you're here as an expert — called by the other side as an expert — and you've been telling us that you're a doctor, and you follow the science and the evidence."

"So, I just want to know, based on the science, can men get pregnant? That's a yes or no question," he reiterated.

Verma continued to refuse to answer the question, claiming Hawley's line of questioning was attempting to politicize the issue while trying to reduce its "complexity."

"It's not complex. 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," Hawley told Verma, who also accused him of conflating biological sex and gender identity.

"This is extraordinary," he said. "No, I'm not conflating male and female. They're two different things. There's biological men and there's biological women, and I want to know, can men get pregnant?"

Hawley later adamantly denied attempting to be polarizing and rebuked Verma for a worldview that he implied is based on a lie.

"It is not polarizing to say that there is a scientific difference between men and women, and I want this to be clear and for the record. It is not polarizing to say that women are a biological reality and should be treated and protected as such," he said.

"That is not polarizing. That is truth. It is also, by the way, the United States Constitution, which offers unique protections to women in a variety of circumstances as women. And your refusal to recognize women as women and men as men is deeply corrosive to science, to public trust, and yes, to constitutional protections for women as women."

Before yielding back, Hawley accused Verma of advancing "a political agenda that has been thoroughly discredited and rejected by the American people," calling their conversation "exceptionally clarifying" and "also, in many ways, quite depressing."

The exchange prompted scorn from many users on social media, some of whom suggested that much of the Democratic Party has become unmoored from reality.