Two leaders of elite California medical schools sat before a congressional committee this week and could not, or would not, give a straight answer to a simple question: Can a non-biological woman have a baby?
Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., posed the question directly during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing titled "Training Activists, Not Physicians: The Impact of DEI on Medical Schools." The hearing examined whether diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at the University of California, San Francisco, UCLA, and the University of Illinois have warped admissions, fueled antisemitism, and reshaped what future doctors are taught about human biology.
The answers she got, halting, hedged, and studiously indirect, may tell taxpayers more about the state of American medical education than any curriculum document could.
Miller opened her questioning by turning to Dr. Sam Hawgood, chancellor of UCSF, and citing the university's own classroom guide, titled "Framework for Gender and Sex Concepts in Teaching." That document, as Fox News Digital reported, advises medical students against using the term "pregnant women" and instructs them to say "pregnant people" instead.
Miller asked Hawgood who "pregnant people" are compared to "pregnant women." Hawgood said the terminology is part of a curriculum designed to help students who face "a wide diversity of patients." He added that the "vast majority of pregnancies are in women" and that he has "absolutely no problem with the term pregnant women."
Miller was not satisfied. She pressed harder.
"Has a non-biological woman ever had a baby?" she asked. Hawgood responded that "a transgender person can." Miller cut in: "That's not a biological woman. Has a non-biological woman ever had a baby?" Hawgood began, "I would reiterate," before Miller interjected with two words: "It's ridiculous."
The exchange captured something broader than one congressman's frustration. It showed a top medical administrator unable, in a formal, sworn-testimony setting, to affirm a biological fact that any eighth-grade health class would cover without hesitation.
Miller then turned to Dr. Steve Dubinett, dean of the UCLA School of Medicine. She cited a required UCLA ob-gyn course that advises students not to "assume gender identity." She also quoted a course disclaimer from what she described as a class in May of 2026, which stated that while it uses the terms "she" and "women," it does not intend to exclude "those who have a uterus but do not identify with these terms."
"What does that even mean?" Miller asked.
Dubinett said he was not familiar with the specific announcement and would need to read the entire thing. Miller pressed: "Can someone have a uterus but not be a woman? Because it seems like your school is promoting that ridiculous idea."
Dubinett responded that the school is "treating transgender people" but doing so "in compliance with state and federal law." He confirmed that UCLA teaches biology. But when Miller demanded a simple yes or no, "Can someone have a uterus and not be a woman?", Dubinett began, "Again, I would," before the committee chair cut in. Miller's time had expired.
Two questions. Two medical school leaders. Zero direct answers. The Washington Examiner noted that Hawgood told the committee, "Of course, the vast majority of pregnancies are in women, and I have absolutely no problem with using the word pregnant women. I use it myself." Yet even that concession came wrapped in qualifications, never quite arriving at the plain biological statement Miller sought.
The documents Miller cited were not obscure academic papers buried in a library database. They were curriculum guides and required course materials at two of the most prominent publicly funded medical schools in the country. UCSF's framework actively discourages the term "pregnant women." UCLA's ob-gyn program tells students not to assume a patient's gender identity and includes disclaimers acknowledging people who "have a uterus but do not identify with these terms."
These are not fringe electives. They are embedded in the training pipeline for the doctors who will deliver babies, perform surgeries, and diagnose diseases across the country. The question is not whether medical professionals should treat all patients with respect, they should. The question is whether medical schools are allowing ideological commitments to override the language of biological science itself.
The hearing's broader scope extended beyond terminology. The committee examined whether DEI initiatives at UCSF, UCLA, and the University of Illinois shaped admissions policies and contributed to antisemitism on campus. Just The News reported that the university leaders declined to give direct yes-or-no answers across multiple lines of questioning, not just on biology.
That pattern of evasion is worth noting. These are not politicians trained to dodge. They are scientists and physicians, people whose entire professional credibility rests on precision, evidence, and the willingness to state what is true even when it is uncomfortable. Yet when a congresswoman asked them to affirm a fact as basic as who can bear children, they reached for bureaucratic hedges.
After the hearing, Miller issued a statement exclusively to Fox News Digital that did not hold back.
"It shouldn't take a medical degree to answer a basic biology question. This hearing exposed that our medical schools have become consumed by political ideology that they're losing sight of reality. Patients just want doctors grounded in common sense. Medical schools that abandon scientific truth should lose their accreditation."
Miller also told the committee directly that "it's clear these medical schools are hiding DEI curriculum under the guise of medical access." That is her characterization, and the hearing record does not settle the question definitively. But the curriculum documents she cited, UCSF's pregnancy language guide, UCLA's gender-identity disclaimers, are real, and neither Hawgood nor Dubinett disputed their existence or content.
The Washington Examiner also noted that Sen. Josh Hawley weighed in on the broader issue, stating, "It is not polarizing to say that women are a biological reality and should be treated and protected as such." That framing, treating biological sex as a settled fact rather than a political position, is precisely what the hearing tested. And by that measure, the two medical school leaders failed.
The episode fits a pattern visible across American institutions, where the Democratic Party's leftward drift has pushed ideological orthodoxy into spaces once governed by empirical standards. Medical education is supposed to be the last place where political fashion overrides observable reality. The hearing suggested otherwise.
There is a reason Hawgood and Dubinett did not simply say "no" when asked whether a non-biological woman can have a baby. Saying "no" would have been scientifically accurate. It also would have put them at odds with the ideological framework their own institutions have adopted, a framework that treats biological sex as fluid, negotiable, and subordinate to self-declared identity.
That tension is the real story. These administrators are caught between the demands of science and the demands of an institutional culture that has embraced gender ideology as a moral imperative. When forced to choose in a public, recorded setting, they chose evasion.
The consequences are not abstract. Medical students trained to avoid the term "pregnant women" will become residents and attending physicians. They will treat patients. They will make diagnostic and treatment decisions shaped by the language and frameworks they absorbed in school. If those frameworks prioritize ideological sensitivity over biological clarity, patients bear the cost.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Hawgood and Dubinett for comment after the hearing. No responses were reported. The silence is consistent with the hearing itself, leaders of major medical institutions declining to engage with straightforward questions about human biology.
Congress has limited tools to address this directly. Miller's call to strip accreditation from schools that "abandon scientific truth" is a position statement, not pending legislation. But the hearing itself serves a function: it puts these curriculum choices on the public record, forces institutional leaders to defend them under oath, and lets taxpayers see what their money funds.
The broader fight over DEI in federally funded institutions continues across multiple fronts. House conservatives have shown a willingness to disrupt business as usual when they believe core principles are at stake, and the medical education question touches something even more fundamental than spending priorities.
Meanwhile, progressive insurgents continue to push the Democratic establishment further left on exactly these cultural questions, making it less likely that any internal correction will come from that side of the aisle.
UCSF and UCLA are not small, obscure programs. They are flagship medical schools at flagship public universities, funded in significant part by federal dollars. Their curriculum choices shape the training of thousands of physicians. And their leaders, when asked under oath whether men can have babies, could not bring themselves to say no.
Miller called it ridiculous. She was being generous. When the people responsible for training America's next generation of doctors treat basic biology as a question too dangerous to answer, the problem is not ignorance. It is cowardice dressed up as compassion, and patients deserve better.
