Can men get pregnant?
An extraordinary exchange between a senator and a doctor; and the darker side of transgender ideology
Further to this post…
…if you haven’t seen it, the exchange here between US Senator Josh Hawley and obstetrician, gynaecologist, researcher and policy adviser Dr Nisha Verma is something to behold:
[Sen Hawley] Do you think that men can get pregnant?
[Dr Verma] I hesitated there because I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going or what the goal was… I do take care of patients with different identities. I take care of many women. I take care of people with different identities. And so that’s where I paused… I wasn’t sure where you were going with that.
[Sen. Hawley] Well, the goal is just the truth. So, can men get pregnant?
[Dr Verma] Again, the reason I paused there is… I’m not really sure what the goal of the question is…
[Sen. Hawley] The goal is just to establish a biological reality. You just said a moment ago that science and evidence should control, not politics. So let’s just test that proposition. Can men get pregnant?
[Dr Verma] I take care of people with many identities, but…
[Sen. Hawley] Can men get pregnant?
[Dr Verma] I take care of many women that can get pregnant. I do take care of people that don’t identify as women…
[Sen. Hawley] Let me just remind you what you testified to a moment ago. Science and evidence should control, not politics. So, can men get pregnant? You’re a doctor, I think...
[Dr Verma] I totally agree [that] science and evidence should guide medicine…
[Sen. Hawley] Do science and evidence tell us that men can get pregnant? Biological men… can they get pregnant?
[Dr Verma] I also think yes/no questions like this are a political tool and…
[Sen. Hawley] No, yes/no questions are about the truth, doctor. Let’s not make a mockery of this proceeding.
This is about science and evidence…. the United States Supreme Court just heard arguments yesterday at great length on this question. 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. It really is, I think.
[Dr Verma] I think you’re trying to reduce the complexity…
[Sen. Hawley] I’m not… 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. Can men get pregnant?
I am reminded of Jeremy Paxman’s 1997 Newsnight interview with Michael Howard, where the question “Did you threaten to overrule him? was asked twelve times.
But Dr Verma is not biting…
[Dr Verma] I think you’re also conflating male and female with…
[Sen. Hawley] This is extraordinary. No. I’m not conflating male and female. They are two different things. There’s biological men, and there’s biological women. And I want to know… can men get pregnant?
[Dr Verma] What you are talking about is biological…
[Sen. Hawley] You’re not gonna answer my question, it sounds like to me… This isn’t hard, doctor. Can men get pregnant? Yes or no?
[Dr Verma] I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you that is not coming from a place of trying to be polarized and push people…
[Sen. Hawley] I’m not trying to be polarizing. I’m trying to ask… I think it is extraordinary that we are here in a hearing about science and about women. And, for the record, it’s women who get pregnant, not men.
We are here about the safety of women, and science that shows that this abortion drug causes adverse health events in 11% of cases. That’s 22 times greater than the FDA label… another fact you haven’t acknowledged.
And yet you won’t even acknowledge the basic reality that biological men don’t get pregnant… there’s a difference between biological men and biological women… 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 us on this basic issue. I thought we were past all of this, frankly. I can’t believe we’re still here talking about this…
[Dr Verma] I am a person of science, and I’m also someone… who’s here to represent the complex experiences of my patients. And I don’t think polarized language or questions serve that goal. I don’t think they serve the American people.
[Sen. Hawley] 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. 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…
I think it’s extraordinary that you would sit here and advance a political agenda that has been thoroughly discredited and rejected by the American people in this forum. I’m glad we had this exchange because it is exceptionally clarifying. It is also, in many ways, quite depressing.
I am reminded of Monty Python’s The ‘right’ to have babies:
“It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality…”
I wonder how that sketch came about.
But while there is an almost comedic element to the exchange between Dr Verma and Senator Hawley, there is of course also a darker side. I am reminded of e.g. Beth Bourne’s account of her experience with “integrated healthcare consortium” Kaiser Permanente in California:
On September 6, 2022, I received mail from my Kaiser Permanente Davis Ob-Gyn reminding me of a routine cervical screening. The language of the reminder stood out to me: “Recommended for people with a cervix ages 21 to 65.” When I asked my Ob-Gyn about this strange wording, she told me the wording was chosen to be “inclusive” of their “transgender” and “gender fluid” patients.
Based on this response, several thoughts occurred to me. Could I expose the medical scandal of “gender-affirming care” by saying and doing everything my daughter and other trans-identifying kids are taught to do? Would there be the type of medical safeguarding and differential diagnosis we would expect in other fields of medicine, or would I simply be allowed to self-diagnose and be offered the tools (i.e. hormones and surgeries) to choose my own gender adventure and become my true authentic self?
If I could demonstrate that anyone suffering from delusions of their sex, self-hatred, or identity issues could qualify for and easily obtain body-altering hormones and surgeries, all covered by insurance as “medically necessary” and potentially “life-saving” care, then maybe people would finally wake up. I certainly had.
I was prepared for failure. I wasn’t prepared for how easy success would be…
It’s a long article, but in summary:
After my daughter’s pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente tried to put her on puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones when she was only 14, I did an undercover story when I pretended to be “nonbinary”.
I was approved by my Kaiser doctors over Zoom for a double mastectomy (top surgery) and a phalloplasty (fake p*nis) made from the skin tissue on my thigh in under 9 months.
It was only a $100 co-pay for my elective mastectomy and $200 co-pay for my phalloplasty yet the surgeons would bill $25k for mastectomy and $135k for the phalloplasty.
Follow the money provides an explanation for much of what goes on. But to my mind not all of it. I am reminded of some of Dr Andrew Zywiec’s comments (from 19:13) in this podcast with Doc Malik:
…covid happened… and then when I found out about the transgenderism… it was the transgenderism thing that really… shattered my worldview because I just couldn’t make sense of how anybody could do something like that… how anybody could be mutilating children, let alone in a hospital system… doctors... And when I say it shattered my worldview… I was so blown away by it.
And the only way that I could make sense of this was… actual evil. I couldn’t rationalize it or justify it or figure it out… With covid… you can frame it in a lot of different ways, and you can kind of make sense of it from the human perspective… about how these things happen. But… [in relation to transgenderism] I had my moment where… I really realized… there’s nothing here except deep and profound insidious darkness.
I wonder what the verdict of history will be on trans ideology.
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