When Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee excoriated nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for declining to define the term “woman,” they could have provided their own answers.
It turns out that some of those same Republicans declined to define a woman as well.
“I don’t have anything for you on that,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).
“I’m not going to indulge you,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Those who made the attempt to define a woman ran into some trouble when asked.
The Tennessee Republican who asked the question herself, declined to answer it, dodging the question three times in a row, citing her policy of not talking to reporters in Senate hallways.
- In a follow-up e-mail to the reporter, Marsha Blackburn’s spokesperson said the definition of a woman is “two X chromosomes.”
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether Blackburn considers women born with only one X chromosome to be women, or if she considers men born with two X chromosomes to be women.
- Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) responded with a written statement, using the same definition as Blackburn: “A woman is born with two X-chromosomes.”
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Britannica Dictionary define a woman as “an adult female person” and “an adult female human being,” respectively.
- Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he defined it as “his wife.”
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) cited something about the birds and the bees, and that a woman is “biologically a woman,” adding that he thinks most Americans can figure out who’s a woman and who’s a man. He thinks it’s odd that it’s a difficult question for some.
- Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) shouted as he slinked into an elevator, “An adult female of the human species.”
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) had to debate the issue:
“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.”
So if a woman has her uterus removed by a hysterectomy, is she still a woman?
“Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?” he asked. (Yes.)
Asked again later if he would consider a woman to still be a woman if she lost her reproductive organs to cancer, Hawley said: “I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) answered quickly, and denied having recently looking it up in a dictionary.
“An adult female human. A Homo sapien with two X chromosomes.”
