Pro-abortion South Carolina legislator plays sexism card with Viagra bill

Often, pro-abortion legislative tactics resemble nothing so much as a child’s temper tantrum. Today’s example: a South Carolina state politician is proposing a bill that places a variety of limits on the purchase of erectile-dysfunction drugs, supposedly to demonstrate the evil sexism of abortion restrictions…

“I purposely tried to make it as invasive, as intrusive, as hypocritical and unnecessary as possible to make the point,” state Rep. Mia McLeod, a Democrat from Columbia, said Tuesday.

McLeod — a lawyer and public relations specialist — told NBC station WCBD of Charleston she wants to make sure men in the male-dominated Legislature know what it feels like to have their reproductive rights targeted […]

“Oh, I don’t think it’ll pass,” McLeod told WCBD. “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.”

The bill would require men attempting to buy Viagra, Cialis, or any other ED to drug submit to a 24-hour waiting period, sex therapy to determine whether his ED is a psychological issue, three counseling sessions pertaining to “sexual counseling” and celibacy resources, and to provide a notarized affidavit from a sexual partner confirming he’s suffered from ED sometime in the last 90 days.

Yes. Really.

Bustle’s Megan Grant, who is so taken in by this pander to the rank-and-file’s arrogance that she’s positively swooning over its brilliance (the left-wing Addicting Info outright calls it “brilliant.” And “perfect.”), provides another quote from McLeod: “I just decided that until they could stay out of my uterus, I would refuse to stay out of their bedroom.”

The stupidity and dishonesty on display here are almost—almost—beyond belief. What makes it even more depressing is that this isn’t the first time a pro-abortion politician has pulled this sort of stunt.

The first way this “point” fails harder than Wendy Davis in a red-state election is that only one of those provisions, the waiting period, is even equivalent to an actual pro-life law. Typically, abortion informed-consent requirements are merely information a pregnant women must be given, and resources on counseling available if she chooses to seek it—not repeated mandatory sessions where her mental state is questioned. I gather the affidavit is supposed to be a dig at reporting requirements for rape exceptions, but there’s a pretty big difference there—unlike erectile dysfunction, rape is, y’know, a crime. Last time I checked, ascertaining when those take place was kind of important.

The second inconvenient truth is that virtually no pro-life law attempts to give Viagra the special treatment McLeod’s side demands for abortion and contraception. Generally speaking, we don’t believe in taxpayer funding or compulsory employer coverage of any elective service, and among those who do, you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who arbitrarily supports them for things used by one sex versus those for the other. That’s because we respect the Constitution and aren’t interested in using government to force personal preferences on people.

However, if Rep. McLeod is really worried about misguided Viagra policy, she might want to check in with her fellow pro-abortion Democrats who’ve opposed eliminating Viagra coverage for sex offenders…

Third, this is ultimately an act of petulant dishonesty, a bit of insincere indignation and cheap theater meant to pretend the truth of abortion away. Unlike abortion, the direct effect of ED medication really is limited to the man. It literally does nothing to anybody else (yes, it helps sex with another individual, but that’s an indirect result… and also not analogous to abortion anyway). If a man cited pro-aborts’ infamous “my body, my choice” in defense of their Viagra use… it would actually be true, for once.

But abortion, as McLeod knows full well but doesn’t have the integrity to confront, does affect somebody else. Who does Viagra kill, Assemblywoman? How fully and implausibly do these people have to pretend the baby isn’t there before lawmakers on the other side of the aisle no longer feels obliged to bend over backwards to “respect” opposing positions?

This bill of course won’t pass, but if I know Republicans (and I do), it won’t get the blistering public condemnation it needs, either. Indeed, out of over a dozen news pieces I read on this stunt, none have any kind of reactions from GOP lawmakers. While one could argue the merits of a “ignore it to deny it the dignity of a response” approach, the larger issue is that this is the latest case of abortion advocates shamelessly demagoguging the issue and skating by without having to confront a real discussion of what’s at stake.

The goal should not be to merely hold the line against pro-choice advancement, but to win the argument and reorient the public’s understanding of which abortion positions are reasonable and which are extreme. You can’t do that if you don’t take every opportunity to call lying and misdirection by their names.