The Chancellor of UC San Francisco's medical school sat before Congress on Tuesday, raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth, and then apparently decided that basic mammalian biology was above his pay grade. As USA Journal reported, Rep. Randy Fine asked Dr. Sam Hawgood a question that most fifth graders could answer without breaking a sweat: "Who else gets pregnant besides women?"
Hawgood's answer: "Transgender men."
Fine's response: "That is insane."
And honestly, it is hard to argue with that assessment. A transgender man is a biological female. When a biological female gets pregnant, that is a woman who is pregnant. You do not need a medical degree from a prestigious institution to understand this. In fact, having a medical degree from a prestigious institution apparently makes it harder to understand this.
But wait, it got better. Fine pressed Hawgood to follow his own logic. If a transgender woman is a woman, then these pregnant people are still women under his own framework, right? Hawgood reportedly twisted himself into what can only be described as a semantic pretzel, at one point offering "transgender person" as a dodge before Fine dragged the full answer out of him word by word. "Transgender men get pregnant," Hawgood finally said, at which point Fine repeated his earlier review: "That is insane."
Then Rep. Miller stepped up and asked Hawgood a yes or no question: has a non-biological woman ever had a baby? One word. Yes or no. Pick one. The Chancellor of one of America's top medical schools could not do it. He could not say the word "no" even though the answer is, has always been, and will always be no. No biological male has ever given birth. It has never happened. It cannot happen. This is not a matter of opinion. This is how the species works.
What makes this whole episode so remarkable is that this man runs an institution responsible for training the next generation of American doctors. These are the people who will eventually be trusted with your health care decisions. And the guy at the top of the organizational chart cannot bring himself to acknowledge, under oath, in front of Congress, that pregnancy requires female reproductive anatomy.
Fine posted the exchange on social media, writing: "Men CANNOT and will NEVER be able to get pregnant."
This is the kind of statement that would have been considered so obvious ten years ago that saying it out loud would have made people wonder if you had suffered a head injury. Now it apparently qualifies as a bold congressional moment.
The real takeaway here is not that one medical school chancellor gave an absurd answer. It is that he clearly felt more comfortable giving an absurd answer than stating a biological fact. That tells you everything about the institutional pressures inside academic medicine right now. When the head of a major research university would rather look foolish on national television than say something scientifically accurate, you have to wonder what is being taught in the classrooms underneath him.
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
