‘Can men get pregnant?' Senator Josh Hawley grills doctor in Senate hearing: Watch

A tense moment from a Senate hearing has gone viral on social media as GOP Senator Josh Hawley grilled a pro-abortion Doctor Nisha Verman, a representative of Physicians for Reproductive Health during a hearing on abortion drugs.

Josh Hawley repeatedly asked, “Can men get pregnant?” which Ms Verman did not answer directly, saying that yes or no questions are often used for political manipulation.

When asked again, Dr Verman said she takes care of persons with different identities, adding, “I think, yeah, I wasn’t sure where you were going with that.”

Senator Hawley said that the goal of the yes-no question is to establish the truth before repeating his question that “Can biological men get pregnant?”

He added, “This is not a hypothetical question. This is not theoretical. It affects real people in their real lives.”

De Verman accused Senator Hawley of trying to reduce the complexity of the issue, polarising the debate and conflating sex and gender, while Hawley said that he was testing the veracity of Dr Verman as a scientist and medical professional.

This tense exchange has drawn mixed reactions from netizens. One X (formerly Twitter) user mocked the doctor, writing, “1950 Science: In the Future we will cure cancer, 2026 Science: We believe Men can get pregnant.”

Another expressed, “If you can’t answer a basic biological question, you shouldn’t be giving expert testimony on policy.”

A third user criticised the senator for “missing a huge conversation about sex, gender and chromosomes.”