Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new phrase entered the American political lexicon: "follow the science." Typically wielded by Democrats and their blue-check-marked allies in the Twittersphere, the command was used to elevate lockdowns and mandatory masking as unquestionable dogma—and to cast opponents of these measures as anti-science. Some Democrats in 2020 even went so far as to campaign on "bringing science to Washington," touting their education credentials as making them especially qualified to serve in government.
Of course, the Democrats' claim to the mantle of science has always been dubious at best. It should come as no surprise, for example, that the evidence for lockdowns and masking is far shakier than left-wing health officials would care to admit. But perhaps nothing illustrates Democrats' hypocrisy on this issue better than last week's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on abortion.
The highlight of the hearing was an exchange between Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and one of the Democrats' witnesses, Khiara Bridges, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Hawley began by asking Bridges about her curious choice of words. Instead of saying "women" in earlier testimony, Bridges had opted in nearly every instance for the far more cumbersome "people with a capacity for pregnancy." "Would that be women?" Hawley queried.
The professor dutifully babbled back what has now become the Democratic Party line: no, it's wrong to state that only women can get pregnant. When Hawley pressed further, Bridges went on the offensive, proclaiming that the senator's questions were "transphobic" and "[open] up trans people to violence by not recognizing them." To merely ask whether pregnancy is a specifically female issue was "dangerous," in the professor's view, so much so that even a U.S. senator ought not escape censure for doing so.
Bridges' aggressive response was entirely predictable, if not alarming. The claim that men can become pregnant is about as defensible as the claim that two and two equal five. Biologically male human beings by definition lack the reproductive organs necessary to conceive and bear a child. If ever there were a scientifically settled question, it is this one—the occasional fringe ideologue notwithstanding.
The problem now, however, is that fringe ideologues have taken over the Democratic Party, along with many other powerful institutions in America. It is telling that Democrats would invite to a high-profile hearing a witness such as Bridges, who denies the reality of biology, despite her view's continuing disfavor with voters. In an election year, one would expect a party already anticipating heavy losses to avoid publicly taking a stand that puts it at odds with well over half the country.
But such political calculations matter little when the position has been accepted as an article of faith. This is now obviously the case for the woke Left, which has conspicuously abandoned the science it otherwise idolizes. In Democratic rhetoric, "women" and "mothers" are being increasingly supplanted by "menstruators" and "birthing persons." And anyone who disagrees can expect to receive the same treatment as Sen. Hawley—or worse, suspension from social media or termination from employment.
For some, this radical turn may seem shocking. But for those of us following the Left's evolution over the last few decades, it has been sadly unsurprising. One could spy the seeds of this revolt against reality, for example, in the Left's long-running defense of abortion, the ostensible subject of last week's Senate hearing. For years, it has been standard for Democrats to dehumanize unborn babies, referring to them merely as a clump of cells or a part of their mothers' bodies, despite their scientifically demonstrable individuality. Nevertheless, even as technology has advanced to show us the amazing intricacies of unborn human life, the Left has grown ever more tenacious in its attempts to deny that life of all recognition.
It's ironic that Professor Bridges would accuse Sen. Hawley of "not recognizing" certain persons when that is exactly what she had done earlier in the hearing in reference to the unborn. But for reality-challenged Democrats, such inconsistencies seem to matter less and less these days. In contrast to previous generations of non-confrontational Republicans, Hawley and his GOP colleagues were smart to draw attention to the left-wing descent into insanity, even if only for political gain.
After all, if Democrats won't be brought back to the real world by science-based arguments or the evidence of their senses, perhaps a catastrophic electoral wipeout will finally do the trick.
Terry Schilling is the president of American Principles Project. Follow him on Twitter at @Schilling1776.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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