Senators grilled Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week on everything from his private emails to the historic 1973 court case Roe v. Wade.

But one moment during the third day of the hearings has set social media ablaze — and has progressives issuing dire warnings.

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That moment? When Kavanaugh described birth control pills as “abortion-inducing drugs.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked Kavanaugh to discuss his dissent in the 2015 Priests for Life v. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) case. In that case, Kavanaugh sided with employers who did not want to provide their employees with access to no-copay contraceptives through the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

Kavanaugh said the religious organization in the case felt it would have been “complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs” that it opposed on religious grounds.

Kavanaugh has displayed his intelligence repeatedly during the proceedings — even through the untold number of interruptions by protesters — and undoubtedly knows the difference between birth control and abortion.

Whether the nominee misspoke or was misunderstood in the moment is still up for debate, but progressives smelled blood and went in for the kill.

Related: Blumenthal Tries and Fails to Bait Kavanaugh into Trump Attack

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Erica Sackin, director of political communications for Planned Parenthood, pounced, saying that the plaintiff in this case was “actually opposed to contraception in its own right — not connected to abortion.”

“The ‘abortion-inducing’ bit is Kavanaugh’s own addition,” Sackin tweeted out on Thursday.

The Affordable Care Act did cover FDA-approved contraceptive methods — and “an issuer opting to cover abortion care in marketplace plans must follow particular administrative requirements to ensure that no federal funds go toward abortion,” stated the Guttmacher Institute in 2015.

That’s the year the case in question was heard.

In most states the ACA did not cover abortion in 2015, but the act as it concerned abortion was complicated.

It was possible, under limited conditions, to get an abortion through ACA coverage — Congress just didn’t guarantee coverage for it.

Whether this had any bearing on Kavanaugh’s remarks on Thursday can’t immediately be known, but he won’t be given any benefit of the doubt by aggressive feminists.

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, posited that Kavanaugh’s description of birth control as an “abortion-inducing drug” was “anti-woman, anti-science propaganda” in an email to the online publisher Bustle.

“Women have every reason to believe their health and their lives are at stake,” Laguens told Bustle. “Kavanaugh has made clear over and over again that he would not uphold women’s ability to access reproductive health care as a constitutional right. Let me break it down for you, Brett: Birth control is basic health care.”

Related: Kavanaugh Clarifies He Doesn’t Back Unlimited Presidential Powers

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) tweeted that his comments were proof of his “hostility toward women’s reproductive freedom,” while NARAL Pro-Choice America argued that “abortion-inducing drugs” is “an anti-choice extremist phrase that shows that our right to access both abortion and contraception would be in SERIOUS danger if [Kavanaugh] is confirmed.”

“Birth control allows women to plan their futures, participate in the economy, and — for some women with health issues like endometriosis — allows them to get through the day,” Laguens also told Bustle.

“It is clear from Kavanaugh’s record and answers that his nomination puts access to affordable birth control at risk.”

And check out this video:

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