Mary Lou Marzian, a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, was provoked into sponsoring “the Viagra bill.”
Mary Lou Marzian, a Democratic member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, has long been concerned with women’s health and welfare. When she served as president of the National Organization for Women in Kentucky, “I saw the struggle that women encountered on many fronts: child care, managing a home, getting kids off to school, economic issues. At that time I was also working as a nurse, which I did until 2009. I worked in an indigent clinic and saw a lot of folks who were on the edge of society, having trouble getting medications, transportation, and seeing advanced diseases that would lead ultimately to patients’ untimely deaths because they didn’t have access to health care. Those two issues—women’s issues and health care—compelled me to run for office. In 2004 a seat in my district opened up. I ran and I won.”
Marzian is proudest of legislation she introduced to improve health in Kentucky: laws that (a) allow nurse-practitioners to prescribe medicines; (b) established the Brain Injury Trust Fund for people with traumatic brain injuries, and forced insurance companies to pay for services—like ramps and widening doors—they had not covered; and (c) allow state employees to get their maintenance medication through mail order so they could get three months of medication for two co-pays. “Those were some of my big ones,” she says.
However, it was a woman’s issue—the Kentucky Senate’s deluge of bills tampering with women’s reproductive choice—that impelled her to turn the tables on her male colleagues: She recently introduced a bill, HB 396, blatantly designed to meddle with Kentucky men’s private lives—putting strict limits to their access to Viagra and other prescription drugs for erectile dysfunction.
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The provisions are delightfully Draconian: Only currently married men may get a prescription: no single men need apply. And the candidate must visit a doctor on two separate days to obtain the prescription. But that’s not all: He must bring a signed and dated statement from his current spouse providing consent for the prescription, and he must swear on a Bible that he will use the ED drug only while having sexual relations with his current spouse.
“There are so many assaults on women’s reproductive health under the guise of ‘protecting’ women, Marzian declares. “I get so angry: Men have no problem putting government into women’s bedrooms, but when you mess with their ability to have intercourse, they wake up.”
Asked about the response to her Viagra bill, she says, “It’s been noticed all over the country—and the world. In the Kentucky House and Senate, the Republicans think it’s ridiculous, but a lot of my Democratic colleagues said ‘You’re right, we don’t need to be inserting ourselves into personal, private decisions.’ I’ve gotten so much mail, and we had a huge rally this week on February 23 in support of Planned Parenthood in the rotunda of the Capitol. Normally there are no more than 30 or 40 people; yesterday there were 300 or 400. What’s great is that young women are just appalled; they are waking up to the fact that many aspects of reproductive choice are in danger, including accessible, safe, legal birth control that is affordable and covered by insurance.”
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“Let’s make her governor,” comments a reader named Kennedy on the website Inquisitr’s story about the bill. Reader Tawny seconds the motion: “Mary Lou Marzian is a certified badass and the newest addition to my list of admirable women. Get it, girl.”
