(TheConservativeNews.org) – President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, could not define the word “woman” during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) asked Jackson if she could provide a definition for the word “woman,” in light of recent national debate regarding transgender athletes and men who compete in women’s sports.
Jackson, who was nominated by Biden because she is a black woman, could not answer Blackburn’s question.
Blackburn asked, “can you provide a definition for the word woman?”
“Can I provide a definition? No, I can’t,” Jackson replied.
“You can’t?” Blackburn again asked. “Not in this context, I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said.
“The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about,” Blackburn said.
Blackburn then turned to Lia Thomas, the man who made national headlines last week after winning the NCAA’s women’s 500-yard freestyle. Blackburn asked Jackson what message allowing Thomas to compete against women sends to “girls who aspire to compete and win in sports?”
“Senator, I’m not sure what message that sends,” Jackson said. “If you’re asking me about the legal issues related to it — those are topics that are being hotly discussed, as you say, and could come to the court.”
“I think it tells our girls that their voices don’t matter. I think it tells them that they’re second-class citizens,” Blackburn said. “And parents want to have a Supreme Court justice who is committed to preserving parental autonomy and protecting our nation’s children.”
The Republican National Committee shared a video of Jackson refusing to define “woman.”
Clips of the exchange spread like wildfire online, with critics noting Jackson’s reluctance to state the biological fact of sex.
Post columnist Piers Morgan called Jackson’s response “ridiculous.”
“I’m not a brain surgeon but I know what a brain is. This is where ‘progressive’ thinking leads – to a terror of stating basic unarguable facts lest it offend the woke brigade,” he wrote on Twitter.
“This shouldn’t have to be said,” tweeted former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, “but if you don’t know what a women is, you shouldn’t be in any position of responsibility — let alone decide the fate of the Republic from our nation’s highest court.”
“Certainly ironic to have a full day of encomia to Jackson being the first black woman nominated for the job, capped by Jackson saying she doesn’t know what a woman is,” tweeted National Review writer Dan McLaughlin, who added in a subsequent post: “The 19th Amendment lists ‘sex’ as a prohibited basis for discrimination against voting rights, & abortion advocates sometimes argue that the propensity of women to get pregnant means that gender equity requires a right to abortion, so defining what a woman is? Not irrelevant.”
