2012 has been a tough year so far for women’s rights, and it’s only March. With legislation cropping up across the nation that seeks to limit our access to birth control and to put hurdle after hurdle between a woman and a legal abortion, it seems only fair that female legislators are turning the tables. Democrat Nina Turner of the Ohio State Senate has introduced Senate Bill 307, which aims to regulate men’s access to erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra.
Turner’s bill would mandate that men seeking prescriptions for these drugs would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test, and (here’s the best part) secure a signed affidavit from a sex partner affirming impotency. So before Joe Schmo can get himself the 8-hour erection of his dreams, under Turner’s proposed bill, Mr. Schmo has to first allow a past partner of his to testify that he couldn’t get it up.
Male critics are not pleased, claiming that Viagra and drugs of the like are used to treat “medical problems,” whereas birth control, they say, is strictly for family planning—which is false. 58% of women surveyed by Doctors for America say they take birth control at least in part for reasons other than family planning.
Part of a national trend, Turner’s bill represents the potential of female lawmakers to fight back against the record-breaking 92 abortion-related bills passed in state legislatures in 2011. Turner simply wants to “legislate it [men’s reproductive health] the same way mostly men say they want to legislate a woman’s womb,” she says.
Image source guttmacher.org and letustalk.files.wordpress.com
