Ben Stiller-led efforts to procure and promote female Viagra notwithstanding, the famous little blue pill has run into trouble in the great state of Kentucky. That’s because a recent bout of anti-abortion legislation making its way through the state House has inspired one lawmaker to counter what many argue is a serious violation of women’s bodies with some good ol’ male-centered legislation. In other words, they want to limit a man’s access to Viagra.
According to the The Courier-Journal out of Louisville, Democratic Rep. Mary Lou Marzian is sponsoring HB 396 in order to “protect these men from themselves.” How so? By requiring all Kentucky men who desire (or need) to use the anti-erectile dysfunction drug to obtain written permission from their wives and visit a doctor at least twice. What’s more, only married men can apply to acquire the drug. Said married men must “make a sworn statement with his hand on a Bible that he will only use a prescription for a drug for erectile dysfunction when having sexual relations with his current spouse.”
Obviously, the bill isn’t going to make it that far in the greater Kentucky Congress. Since 2015 the commonwealth’s 100-seat House of Representatives has included 19 women, or just under a fifth of its total assembly. And while the state’s Democratic Party controls 50 of those seats, the Senate maintains a Republican majority. Hence why they recently passed SB 4, otherwise known as the “informed consent” bill, and shot it unencumbered to the recently-elected Republican Governor Matt Bevin for his signature.
Marzian admitted to The Courier-Journal that her bill was a stunt meant to protest SB 4, or what she views as the “intervention by a predominantly male General Assembly into women’s health.”