The anti-abortion Slenderman that is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has spent much of his political career trying to dismantle abortion rights. But he’s spent the past year obsessively amplifying a bogus “study” from the far-right Ethics and Public Policy Center (which is listed as an advisor under Project 2025), which published false findings about the abortion pill, mifepristone, having “adverse effects” on women.
Hawley has since been desperately trying to get the FDA to ban the abortion pill—though he’s using the less-obvious term “re-review.” FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary initially agreed to this in September; however, he’s since reportedly been delaying the review until after the midterms, since abortion rights are popular with Americans and the GOP is already holding onto their Republican trifecta by a pinky. Hawley was pissed about this.
So I was shocked when, on Wednesday, Hawley used his time at a Senate hearing—idiotically titled, “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs”—to not ramble about his beloved fake study and its imagined harms of mifepristone. Instead, he referred to his GOP culture war handbook to repeatedly ask Dr. Nisha Verma, “Can men get pregnant?” His stupid fucking smirk was mighty smug for a guy who saluted Jan. 6 rioters and then ran like a terrified baby deer once they stormed the Capitol.
Dr. Verma, a double board-certified OB/GYN and complex family planning subspecialist, kept trying to point out the nuance in his question, explaining that she “takes care of many patients with different identities.” But MAGA doesn’t know what nuance is, so Hawley just got angrier and angrier at being asked to consider how his rigid worldview doesn’t reflect the patients doctors actually treat.
“Let’s not make a mockery of this proceeding,” Hawley said at one point, before proceeding to make a mockery of the proceeding by asking, “Can men get pregnant?” 12 times; exclaiming that Dr. Verma’s responses were “extraordinary” three times; and dismissing her at one point by saying, “You’re a doctor, I think.” During his five minutes, he also cut off, interrupted, or talked over Dr. Verma 16 times.
“I am a person of science, and I’m also someone who is here to represent the complex experiences of my patients,” Dr. Verma said. “And I don’t think polarized language or questions serve that goal, I don’t think they serve the American people…” to which Hawley interrupted to scream something about the U.S. Constitution “protecting women.”
Hilariously, he concluded his rant—which had absolutely nothing to do with the supposed safety of the abortion pill—by saying: “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.” Hawley’s middle name could be Josh “I advance the anti-abortion political agenda” Hawley at this point!
The abortion pill is safe, over 100 studies have said so, and earlier this week, the medical journal JAMA published a study making clear the fact that the FDA’s track record on regulating mifepristone was never politically motivated. “FDA staff and scientists were basing the recommendations on the evidence, and that’s how it’s supposed to be,” Dr. Caleb Alexander, one of the paper’s co-authors, told the New York Times of JAMA’s findings.
Of course, Hawley didn’t expose the “dangers of chemical abortion drugs” —he just reminded everyone that when Republicans say they want to “protect women,” what they mean is control pregnant bodies, shut down doctors, and yell at anyone who won’t play dumb with them.
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