Patriarchy, Sex
The recent political onslaught of tone deaf and repetitive conversations about a woman’s right to choose are getting tired. Apparently lawmakers feel the same way and have decided to shake things up. Democratic State Rep. Mia McLeod of Columbia South Carolina is working on making it harder for men to get their hands on the little blue pill. “I purposely tried to make it as invasive, as intrusive, as hypocritical and unnecessary as possible to make the point,” she told NBC. We like her already.
Long over traditional means to battle abortion laws, McLeod has proposed a bill that would make it as intrusive for men to get erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra and Cialis as it is becoming for women to get an abortion. What does this mean? Currently, abortion restrictions are progressively getting worse and there are 231 new abortion restrictions across the country. According to a study from the Guttmacher Institute, “27 states [have] enough restrictions to be considered hostile; 18 of these can now be considered extremely hostile. The entire South is now considered hostile to abortion rights, and much of the South, along with much of the Midwest, is extremely hostile to abortion rights.” Two laws mandate that women have ultrasounds and look at the images before being allowed to get an abortion.
Under the proposed bill, a man seeking erectile drugs would have to wait out his prescription for a mandatory 24-hour waiting period (this would be the same 24-hour waiting period that women of South Carolina are held to before receiving an abortion), submit a notarized affidavit from at least one sexual partner affirming that the patient has experienced symptoms of ED within the last 90 days, be examined by a state-licensed sexual therapist to make sure his ED isn’t caused by other conditions and attend three sessions of outpatient counseling within six months including sexual counseling and resources for patients to pursue celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.
We love the last one. The idea that a man with ED should “pursue celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice” is basically telling men, if you can’t get it up, then you should not have sex. This is similar to the weak argument that women should not have sex if they don’t want to get pregnant.
McLeod knows and admitted that this bill won’t pass. “I don’t think it’ll pass. I really just want to broaden the discussion and get people thinking about and talking about some of the issues that women face who are seeking legal abortion services in this state,” she says. We like the gesture even if it won’t pass. It means that government officials will need to start thinking more how how it feels to intervene in the reproductive choices of women because they sure don’t like women telling men what to do with their bodies.
McLeod is not the first black women to propose bills like this though. Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and Georgia state Rep. Yasmin Neal also introduced viagra restriction bills. Other female lawmakers who’ve also been actively pushing back against abortion restrictions include Virginia state Sen. Janet Howell, Illinois state Rep. Kelly Cassidy and Missouri state Rep. Stacey Newman, who, similar to Georgia state Rep. Yasmin Neal, introduced legislation that proposed men only be allowed vasectomies if their lives depended on it.
