Professors Sue Biden Admin Over Abortion Rule: ‘Pregnancy Is Not a Disease’

Two University of Texas professors are suing the Biden administration over new rules prohibiting discrimination, arguing that educators should be allowed to flunk students who miss class to get an abortion and that they should not have to honor requests from transgender and nonbinary students who want to be referred to by “they/them” pronouns.

Daniel Bonevac, a philosophy professor at UT, and John Hatfield, a business professor at the college, filed near-identical legal declarations last month, claiming that the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) overstepped its authority by issuing new rules that bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics or pregnancy status.

“I have no intention of complying with the Biden Administration’s recently announced Title IX edict, which has nothing to do with ‘sex’ discrimination and represents nothing more than an attempt to force every educator in the United States to conform to a highly contentious interpretation of gender ideology and abortion rights,” both declarations read.

Newsweek reached out to the DOE via email for comment.

The Biden administration released the new regulations on April 19, expanding the interpretation of Title IX to protect students who become pregnant, terminate a pregnancy, or are recovering from a pregnancy.

The DOE said that the expansion will “advance Title IX’s promise of ensuring that no person experiences sex discrimination, including sex-based harassment or sexual violence, in federally funded education.” The regulations are set to go into effect on August 1.

As part of those regulations, federally-funded schools and universities are to excuse students who miss class to terminate their pregnancies “for as long as the student’s physician deems medically necessary.” But Bonevac and Hatfield said they’d only grant those absences if an abortion was medically necessary, arguing that “Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not ‘health care’ or ‘medical treatment’ of any sort.'”

“They are purely elective procedures, and I will not accommodate an act of violence against the most vulnerable and defenseless members of the human family,” the professors said.

They also pointed out that Texas has outlawed and criminalized abortion in all circumstances unless the mother’s life is in danger, and thus, they would not be “complicit in these crimes” by excusing students to seek an illegal abortion in Texas.

The state banned all abortions except to save the life of the pregnant patient after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected the most significant challenge to the state’s new abortion laws, ruling against 20 women who had serious pregnancy complications because those laws stopped them from getting medical care.

Bonevac and Hatfield also argued that they would not use the pronoun “they” because “it is ungrammatical to use a plural pronoun to refer to a single person.”

“I will not violate the rules of grammar or make a fool of myself to accommodate a student’s delusional beliefs. Nor will I honor demands to use other ‘made-up’ pronouns that are not a standard part of the English language,” their declarations read.

They also said that they would not permit their teaching assistants to “engage in cross-dressing” while teaching their classes or interacting with their students. They require their TAs to dress in professional attire, and male TAs are not allowed to wear dresses or high heels while working for them.

“Although I am not opposed to hiring a crossdresser or transvestite as a teaching assistant, they must refrain from this behavior while on the job and when interacting with my students in any way,” the professors said.