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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Ky. Bill Would Require Wife’s OK for Viagra

(CN) - A Kentucky lawmaker proposed a tongue-in-cheek bill that would require Bluegrass State men to get spousal consent for erectile dysfunction medications like Viagra, in an apparent jab at anti-abortion measures.

Mary Lou Marzian, D-Jefferson, filed HB 396 last Thursday. The bill would force a health care practitioner to "require a man to produce a signed and dated letter from the man's current spouse providing consent for a prescription for erectile dysfunction."

It would also require a man seeking ED drugs to have two different office visits before getting a prescription, and swear on the Bible that he will only use the medication "for sexual relations with his current spouse." The bill would allow only married men to get ED drugs.

Marzian told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the bill is meant to ensure that men are informed about potentially dangerous side effects of medications. She told the newspaper she wants "to protect these men from themselves."

She also reportedly said the bill "is about family values," hence the requirement of swearing on the Bible.

But Marzian also admitted that she didn't think her bill would get very far and said it was filed in response to several anti-abortion initiatives making their way through the legislature, according to the Courier-Journal.

She filed HB 396 a week after Gov. Matt Bevin signed into law an "informed consent" measure, which requires women to have a face-to-face meeting with a health care provider before getting an abortion.

"I started thinking, 'How would this body of men feel if the government was injecting [itself] into their private medical decisions,'" Marzian told Fox affiliate WDRB.

She reportedly added that the purpose of HB 396 is to "have government insert itself into the personal, private decisions of men - since we have already inserted it into our personal, private decisions of women."

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