HuffPost Asks GOP Lawmakers ‘What Is a Woman?’
The Huffington Post asked Republican lawmakers the same question they say Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson failed to answer. On Wednesday, the outlet released a report of responses Republican lawmakers gave…
The Huffington Post asked Republican lawmakers the same question they say Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson failed to answer.
On Wednesday, the outlet released a report of responses Republican lawmakers gave to the question “what is a woman?”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told the Huffington Post, “I don’t have anything for you on that.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, “I’m not going to indulge you.”
The outlet reported that Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) “dodged the question three times in a row, citing her policy of not talking to reporters in Senate hallways ― even though it was Blackburn who made this an issue with Jackson in the first place.”
A spokesperson for Blackburn told the Post in a follow-up email that a woman is “Two X chromosomes.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) responded the same way, saying, “A woman is born with two X-chromosomes.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) explained he has “more of a traditional view of what a woman is.”
When asked what that is, he replied, “My wife.”
According to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a woman is someone who is “biologically a woman.”
He added, “The birds and the bees stuff ― it’s been a while, but I think I remember the general gist of the differences. To have a hard time answering that question is kind of odd to me.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) offered a more descriptive response.
“Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman,” he said. “Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”
When asked if a woman is still a woman if she had her uterus removed, Hawley told the outlet, “Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?”
Additionally, the Post asked Hawley if a woman is still a woman if she loses her reproductive organs to cancer.
“I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?” Hawley asked.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said a woman is “an adult female human.”
Blackburn asked Jackson to provide a definition for the word woman last month, as IJR reported.
Jackson replied saying she cannot because she is “not a biologist.”