The price of pretense

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

A congressional hearing on so-called diversity programs in medical schools produced a revealing exchange about biology, language, and institutional pressure. The chancellor of one of America’s leading medical centers was asked a simple question, but gave a tortured answer.

EICHER: WORLD Commentator Albert Mohler says the hearing exposed just how gender ideology has permeated the medical establishment.

ALBERT MOHLER: It has happened again.

This time, it happened at a congressional hearing on DEI ideology in medical schools.

Last week, the chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, was asked why official university documents refer to “pregnant people” rather than “pregnant women.”

Dr. Samuel Hawgood responded rather blandly that the term is simply meant to be inclusive.

HAWGOOD: So, that is a part of a curriculum to help our students who are facing a wide diversity of patients. Of course, a vast majority of pregnancies are in women. And I have absolutely no problem with using the word “pregnant women.” I use it myself.

Well, good for the chancellor.

He uses the term “pregnant women”—at least in some cases.

He offered that answer as if it should make perfect sense. As if it should simply be accepted by all.

But let’s be clear.

The chancellor’s statement turns the entire world upside down. It rejects biological reality itself—which would seem to be a problem for a major medical research institution.

Representative Mary Miller of Illinois saw the problem. She asked the chancellor a direct question.

MILLER: Has a non-biological woman ever had a baby?

HAWGOOD: A transgender person can.

MILLER: That’s not a biological woman.

HAWGOOD: I would reiterate, we take care of transgender patients. Transgender men get pregnant.

This is one of those moments when only the irrational makes sense.

Consider it an “emperor has no clothes” moment of clarity.

In this case, the emperor has no uterus.

If a human body can bear a child, it is a female body. If a body has male anatomy, it is a male body.

We are not talking here about genuinely unclear sexual development. Such conditions are real, but rare.

We are talking about a male claiming to be female—or a female claiming to be male.

And in the case of a “pregnant person,” biological reality is especially clear.

If you are pregnant, you are female. You began life female, and you remain female.

Period.

Yet this issue came up repeatedly at the hearing. Representative Randy Fine of Florida also asked who can become pregnant. Later, he explained to Fox Business:

FINE: What was extraordinary in the testimony is even he didn’t want to admit to it. He didn’t want to say a transgender man could get pregnant. He stumbled around, frankly, like a fool. And when a doctor who’s running a medical school can’t tell basic biology, we have real problems in this country.

In one sense, all of this has become frustratingly predictable.

Americans are increasingly aware of the irrationality. Most are not buying into this subversion of reality.

Nevertheless, the ideological poison has reached deeply into the upper echelons of American academia—and also the medical professions.

It is as if the chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco—one of the most advanced medical centers in the world—had claimed that the heart has nothing to do with the circulation of blood.

Male and female are, if anything, even more basic to human anatomy than circulation.

Human beings understood the distinction between male and female long before they understood how blood circulates through the body.

Children understand it.

They are blessedly free of ideological contamination.

It is also worth noting that the mainstream media have largely ignored this story.

And that deserves our attention.

The media know full well that transgender ideology is a lie. They also know that any honest report on this congressional hearing would reveal that the emperor has no clothes.

Or, again, as we must now say, the emperor has no uterus.

And just to be clear once again: If you have a uterus and you are pregnant, you are female—not merely a “pregnant person.”

I actually do not believe the chancellor—an intelligent man—actually believes what he said.

Nevertheless, he evidently believed he had to say it.

That’s what is even scarier.

And you are right to fear where this is headed.

For WORLD, I’m Albert Mohler.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.