At the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions’s abortion pills hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri spent the whole of his allotted time reiterating disinformation about transgender people.

And, this isn’t the first time he’s utilized a hearing about reproductive healthcare to do so.

During an interaction at the hearing, Sen. Hawley asked Dr. Nisha Verma, who provides reproductive care in Georgia and Massachusetts, “Can men get pregnant?” Hawley asked this question over 10 times, repeatedly cutting her off when she attempted to answer.

Verma, along with Dr. Monique Wubbenhorst and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, was called on by the committee for the hearing. Wubbenhorst previously testified in support of anti-abortion initiatives, and AG Murrill just indicted a California abortion provider on felony charges, accusing him of sending abortion pills into her state.

Before Hawley had the chance to share his views on gender, Florida Sen. Ashley Moody kicked off the topic by asking, “Miss Verma, can men get pregnant?”

“Dr. Verma,” she corrected.

Moody repeated:“Dr. Verma, can men get pregnant?” Verma paused. Moody asked the other witnesses, who quickly replied “no.”

Later in the hearing, before handing off the mic to Sen. Hawley, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chairs the committee, said, “I think it’s science-based, by the way, that men can’t have babies.”

Then, it was Hawley’s turn.

“Since you bring it up, why don’t we start there,” he began. “Dr. Verma, I wasn’t sure I understood your answer to Sen. Moody a moment ago. Do you think that men can get pregnant?”

“I hesitated there because I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going or what the goal was,” Dr. Verma responded, adding, “I mean I do take care of patients with different identities, I take care of many women, I take care of people with different identities.”

“Well,” Hawley returned, “the goal is the truth, so can men get pregnant?” “Again,” Dr. Verma said, “the reason I pause there is I’m not really sure what the goal of the question is—” Hawley cut her off, in part saying, “the goal is just to establish a biological reality.”

“I take care of people with many identities—” Dr. Verma began, before being cut off by Hawley.

“Can men get pregnant?”

“I take care of many women, I do take care of people that don’t identify as women—”

“Can men get pregnant?”

“Again, as I’m saying—”

Hawley cut in. This tempo continued, with the senator at one point saying that he was “trying to test, frankly,” Dr. Verma’s “veracity as a medical professional and as a scientist” and “I thought we were passed all of this, frankly.”

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

Transgender men can and do get pregnant, as detailed in several different reports currently posted on The National Library of Medicine, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services. Scientific research on this community is still limited, in part due to transgender men being hesitant to seek medical care in hospitals. Research out of Rutgers University found that about 44 percent of pregnant transgender men seek medical care outside of traditional care with an obstetrician, like with a nurse-midwife.

During the hearing, Republican members described abortion medication as dangerous and in need of further restriction. Their Democrat colleagues said that the hearing, entitled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs,” was a way to discredit settled science.

Mifepristone, one of the pills used in abortions with medication, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for over 25 years and, just this past October, the FDA approved another generic version of the pill. A New York Times review of more than 100 studies on abortion medication found that it is safe and effective.

The current pushback against abortion medication, which accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the US in 2023, is being spearheaded in part by Erin Hawley—the senator from Missouri’s wife. Erin Hawley works for the Alliance Defending Freedom and, in 2024, unsuccessfully argued for further restrictions on abortion medication in front of the Supreme Court. In December, the couple launched “The Love Life Initiative,” which aims to support anti-abortion ballot initiatives.

Back in 2022, at a different hearing on abortion access, Sen. Hawley focused on the same topic with another witness: law professor Khiara Bridges. Hawley began, as he did on Wednesday, by saying he “wants to understand.”

“You’ve referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy. Would that be women?” Hawley said. Bridges responded, explaining that some cis women can get pregnant while others can’t—and that people who don’t identify as women get pregnant, too. “So,” the senator returned, “this isn’t really a women’s rights issue.”

Bridges replied, smiling: “we can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.”

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