In a telling moment during Wednesday’s confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh appeared dumbfounded when he was asked by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) whether he knows of any laws that give the government the power to control male bodies.

“Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?” Harris asked.

After a long pause and a bizarre back-and-forth in which Kavanaugh asked for a more specific question and then claimed he thought Harris was “asking about medical procedures that are unique to men,” the judge eventually admitted that he could not think of any laws governing the male body.

Watch:

The exchange came after Harris asked Kavanaugh to answer several questions about Roe v. Wade, to which he ultimately responded, “I have not articulated a position on that.”


Earlier in the day, several other Democratic senators posed questions about reproductive rights, which Kavanaugh also promptly dodged. In a particularly telling moment, following questioning by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Kavanaugh claimed that the 17-year-old immigrant who tried to obtain an abortion last year, Jane Doe, did not seek the required approvals from the government. As Durbin pointed out, this is incorrect, as Doe obtained a judicial bypass before a Texas court.

As ThinkProgress has previously reported, Kavanaugh would be disastrous for abortion rights, having previously praised the dissent in Roe v. Wade. If he is confirmed, it is all but guaranteed that abortion law will be overturned.