It was originally supposed to be a cardiac drug for treating a painful heart condition called angina. It didn’t do so well at that, but the side effect of helping its users have stronger erections drew plenty of attention. Eventually, the focus shifted from cardiac health to sexual health, and the world hasn’t been the same since.
Before Viagra, erectile dysfunction, when it was talked about at all, was often a source of shame for men, and it was not uncommon for the condition to be blamed on psychological factors. More than 20 years of research into erectile dysfunction and how drugs like Viagra work have made it clear that in most cases erection problems are directly related to circulation problems – problems that these drugs can treat quite well.
There’s no putting that particular genie back in the bottle. Viagra and its competitors have been used successfully by tens of millions of men, many of whom credit the drug with giving them back their sex lives. But as legislation adding restrictions to abortion rights and access to birth control for women has made headlines over the past several years, some women’s advocates are making a point about discrepancies in access to sexual healthcare between men and women.
2012: Female Lawmakers Draw Attention to Male Reproductive Rights
In 2012, a spate of proposed legislation at the state level was written by women to point out how many more barriers there are between women and sexual healthcare than there are between men and sexual healthcare. Specifically, there’s very little hassle involved for men who want to obtain Viagra, while women who want prescription birth control or access to abortion must often navigate a complex maze of bureaucratic processes to do so.
That year, an amendment to a bill in Oklahoma took arguments against women’s right to birth control and took them to their logical conclusion in terms of men, a conclusion which could be summed up in the Monty Python song “Every Sperm Is Sacred.” The amendment would have made it illegal for men in Oklahoma to masturbate, or indeed to ejaculate anywhere except in a woman’s vagina.
A bill in the state of Georgia proposed outlawing vasectomies on the argument that they deprive thousands of children of birth every year. In Virginia, legislators proposed that men who wanted Viagra jump through hoops analogous to those women must navigate for reproductive care, including a requirement that men undergo a rectal exam and cardiac stress test, as well as providing a certificate from a recent sexual partner attesting that they had erectile dysfunction and seeking sex therapy before obtaining a prescription.
Borrowing Language from Legislation Restricting Abortion
In 2012, Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner, who proposed a law similar to the one proposed in Virginia told NPR that when it comes to regulating a woman’s access to contraception or safe abortion, “We don’t see anything wrong with it because that’s the way we’ve been socialized.” In fact, many of these proposed bills specifically drew language directly from legislation aiming to restrict women’s access to contraception and abortion.
Turner’s bill, for example, took language directly from Ohio’s “heartbeat bill,” which would have banned abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is often possible before a woman knows she’s pregnant. Other “inspiration” for Turner’s proposed legislation includes a proposed bill that would ban physician assistants from placing or removing intrauterine devices (a popular form of birth control) – a bill that was proposed because of the (male) sponsor’s moral opposition to the use of IUDs as birth control.
2015: SC Lawmaker Proposes Bureaucratic Hurdles for Viagra Seekers
More recently, South Carolina State Representative Mia McLeod (D-Columbia) proposed legislation that would make drugs like Viagra harder for men to obtain. McLeod’s proposed bill, which was inspired by conditions in the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws aimed at reducing access to abortion, would require men who wanted to obtain drugs for erectile dysfunction to produce notarized affidavits from at least one sex partner verifying the experience of erection problems within the preceding 90 days.
Said McLeod to the Columbia Free-Times, “Those who are adamant about introducing some type of abortion bill every session, that’s really what this is about – I’m just sick of it. We’ve got much bigger fish to fry. I just decided that until they could stay out my uterus I would refuse to stay out of their bedroom.”
The Goal Isn’t to Actually Pass Legislation
Lawmakers like Turner and McLeod don’t actually want to make it harder for men to get access to erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra, of course. The point of the proposed bills has always been to draw attention to the bureaucracy surrounding women’s access to contraception and abortion services by highlighting how comparatively easy it is for men to access drugs that improve their sexual health. There’s no danger of any of these bills becoming law, but in a presidential election year, you can bet McLeod’s proposal and similar ones will make headlines.
Continuing debate surrounding the Affordable Care Act and what employers are and are not required to cover is likely to fuel discussions further. For example, craft chain Hobby Lobby, which got permission from the US Supreme Court to drop the morning after pill and IUDs from employee health insurance plans, continued to cover Viagra and vasectomies for men, to the consternation of many women’s rights groups.
With hardly any exceptions, nobody wants to go back to the days when erection problems were chalked up to psychological issues and swept under the rug. Sexual health is important to overall health, and it only makes sense that when scientists discover ways to treat common issues, like erectile dysfunction, that they make those treatments available. An added bonus is that the topic becomes less taboo, more men (and women) realize what a common problem erectile dysfunction is, and it’s treated as the medical issue it is.
At eDrugstore.com, we work with US-licensed pharmacists to dispense Viagra as well as other brands of erectile dysfunction drugs, along with a number of additional sexual health and lifestyle medications. Our goal is to provide uniformly excellent customer service, ship products quickly and discreetly, and generally make it as easy as possible for customers to get on with and enjoy their lives. We invite you to explore the topic of erectile dysfunction more thoroughly and encourage you to get in touch with us if you have questions.
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