Boxer: We Don’t Restrict Viagara Funding, Why Restrict Abortion
December 9, 2009
by The New Agenda
|21 Comments
Hat tip to Tina.
This is a argument that women have been making for years. During the 2008 election and prior, it has been noted that many insurance companies refused to cover certain birth control for women while gladly covering Viagara for men.
Senator Boxer brought Viagara back to the Senate Floor yesterday in arguing against Senator Nelson’s attempts to limit abortion funding.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: There’s nothing in this amendment that says if a man some days wants to buy Viagra, for example, that his pharmaceutical coverage cannot cover it, that he has to buy a rider. I wouldn’t support that. And they shouldn’t support going after a woman using her own private funds for her reproductive health care.
About time someone said it — and of course, it was not going to be a man.
Janis I heard part of the debate yesterday on C-span. before boxer was a male senator whose name i did not hear and voice i did not recognize, who talked similar lines as Boxer bringing up pharmaceuticals and procedures for male reproductive choices not under scrutiny.
Good — if you can find out his name or find a clip, I’d love to see it. (Seriously, I’m not being snide here.)
I am convinced all of patriarchy was constructed to increase ill-perceived consequences of female pregnancy. If they aren’t any natural negative consequences, they’ll legislate some. You need to have a husband, because men have jobs. If you don’t need a husband, well, you sure as hell will need health care and you know -someone- has to pay for that because it’s just not free. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, free viagra and let’s morph men into sex crazed maniacs on steroids. I, for one, do not want my tax dollars allowing some over aged husband to rape his wife.
Clearly Sen Boxer isnt comparing the use of Viagra with an abortion is she…If so she will set the pro choice movt back a generation for there is clearly no comparision
Frankly I dont think, anything elective should be funded by taxpayers, be it viagra,plastic surgery,abortion etc. Govt funding should be reserved to absolute medical necessities only and only for those who have no ability to pay for them
look at it though..where was the first emergence of patriarchy? The desert. Men moved their community (by force) to some of the most arid regions, where they believed their might would come of use, where they would have to labor for food, where they could lord over women in their percieved necessity. Moving our technology back to feminine technology where the Earth produces abundance naturally will push men back to their natural positions: on the periphery
Bruce, Viagra and abortion/contraception are almost exactly equivalent in one crucial way: they allow you to enjoy yourself.
Teh absence of a woman’s ability to choose whether she will become a parent keeps her fearful and tense during sex. It reassures insecure men that while that woman is lying under them, she’s not really relaxed and enjoying herself, because the consequences could blow her life apart at the seams. Without the knowledge that she is still in control of her own body, a woman cannot enjoy herself. Not even a little bit — there is always fear in the back of your head, always a doubt, always something to make you tense and nervous.
Both Viagra and abortion/contraception are about the freedom to enjoy, whioch is evidently guaranteed in the Constitution for men, but when exercised by women will cause the Earth to fly apart. What’s that old cliche defition of porn? “It’s only dirty if she likes it?” Women who like sex have been considered dirty, debauched, and immoral for centuries. It’s appalling, and we’re sick of it.
Boxer can’t put it in male terms, because there are no comparable terms to put it in: that which enhances male pleasure during sex is good and wonderful. That which enhances female pleasure during sex is bad. That’s what this boils down to — only the man should enjoy himself.
That’s why Viagra and abortion/contraception are — at least in this way — equivalent. Of course, they’re different in other ways.
Why you should pay for it is another matter, and a very simple one: societies that empower women to choose the means of our own parenthood are much stabler and have a higher standard of living than ones that don’t.
Period. That’s what it boils down to. Empower women to choose when and how they become parents, and the world improves. And there’s no neutral position on this. There’s no “I choose not to have a dog in this race.” “I support it but I refuse to pay for it” means nothing. You either pony up, or you are part of taking that right away. Unfortunately, there’s no middle ground. It’s like saying that you support people not dying of smallpox, but you refuse to pay for inoculations. Or, like most conservatives, they support clean streets and public education,but they don’t want to pay taxes. they want everything, but they don’t want to pay for it.
If you want a healthy society, you trust us to make the decision of when and how to create new humans, because for better or worse, we’re the ones who do it.
I’d say if you want a healthy planet, you do that as well; the entire fact that we’ve nearly crushed the planet’s ability to deal with our presence boils down to the fact that human society feels that Fertility Is Not To Be Trusted and must be controlled at all times and forced into subservience lest it destroy us all.
Essentially, if you want to see a society where there’s no such thing as abortion, then go to Ethiopia or the old immediately post-Ceaucescu Romania. Hardly paradises. Sure, there’s a theoretical world out there where abortion is a rare thing. There’s also a land over the clouds where we all ride rainbow ponies — we have to cope with the world we’re in now. And in that world, we fund anything and everything that allows women to choose for ourselves whether and when we become parents. One either trusts fertility or one attempts to crush it. There’s just no middle ground. I wish there were. It’d be an easier sell.
Janis,
Exactly. We are talking about a woman’s reproductive rights, and we all know how insurance companies presently over charge women for her “womanness” and “special” female problems like birth control, as if men are somehow the default. It’s truly bizarre. But men push for viagra to be covered, so they can continue to exert sexual prowess over women, and their wives. Pregnancy is a physical thing. When will men get it through their heads that it is a woman’s choice to bear a child. No human, male or female, has a right to exit someone’s vagina. The end.
And on the above note, dissecting the Patriarchy, that after they moved to some of the most arid and lifeless regions on the planet, to try out farming, where they could fight eachother over what little resources there were, and bring war to all communities on earth, thus perpetuating the patriarchy…
men blamed their resulting miseries on God. Yep. A big man in the sky who made them do it. Well, I think, Eve’s only mistake was giving Adam the apple. Then Adam realized he only had a penis.
We don’t live in a rational world where men think about the effects of their actions, but meanwhile seem to think that anything they do should be rewarded, therefore devising a system of economy to reward themselves for everything they do. Women should continue to have kids, even though having kids is a physical and dangerous act, but men should be paid for any slightly physical act. Nothing should be free, but men should have a right to come out of a vagina, free of charge. They invented work so they could pretend to be women. It’s unnatural. Men for instance never, while taking viagra in order to continue lording their sexuality over a woman, think about how their degenerate sperm will affect future generations, as the placenta that their aged and degenerate sperm makes is not bountiful in the least. But they want those kids to come out, because it means a woman suffers.
I would agree that contraception and viagra should be treated equally, still it is to me a very long walk from the” pill” and Viagra to abortion. Had Sen Boxer compared the pill to viagra, that this male could understand. I guess the problem is the Big Elephant in TNA’s room -one’s view of abortion and we have all agreed to not get into that here
Also, is any one here really convinced that birth control and cosmetic surgeries are electives for women? We all know that men focus a woman on her appearance, because having to focus on one’s appearance as a human creates misery, and anxiety. So they create a world in which women’s appearance is focused on more than a man, and the focus of a man is on himself, what he “does” to make it so that he can enjoy himself, as Janis points out. We all know that beauty products etc is a huge economic burden on women, and women have to spend incrementally more money and time just to be normal in society…so no..Men make a large part of a woman’s economy and power in society her looks, so no I don’t think cosmetic surgery is an elective for women, and men should pay for it.
Unfortunately, another half of this reply got eaten.
Cosmetic surgey is definitely elective in many instances … but birth control, absolutely not. For the simple reason that societies that make it possible for women to choose the circumstances of our parenthood (or not to be parents at all) are the societies on this Earth that work better.
If you want to see a birth-control-and-abortion-free paradise, move to Ethiopia or the immediately-post-Ceaucescu Romania. Hellholes, in other words.
If you want to live in a civilized society with a good standard of living, then you enable women to choose whether and when we become parents. Period. Otherwise, it’s like saying you want clean streets and bridges that don’t fall over but you don’t want to pay taxes. Tough. You want that stuff, you gotta pay for it. So it’s on a totally different scale from cosmetic surgery. No society ever fell apart because it refused to conscion cosmetic surgery. But if you want to see the places on Earth where there is no birth control or abortion, you’d better like AIDS and ebola.
I see cosmetic surgery as women succumbing to the extraordinary pressures of society (men), which only purpose serves to keep women miserable. It’s basic human psychology and they know very well how to wield it, because they are super sensitive. If they had any ounce of what they give to us, they would crumble. Men want to make a society that burdens women, and where the women pay for it too. I have already proposed the man tax, where men are taxed more and the taxes even things out, like women giving birth free of charge. A woman’s cosmetic surgery is hardly elective if she is doing it to increase her beauty, which men make necessary through selective focus.
Birth control is absolutely a necessity, because again, men created a society that legislates harmful conditions during and after pregnancy -for the woman-, and negative unnatural consequences in addition to the natural ones.
and they still all just want to F*** (and r**e)
I can see how cosmetic surgery is on the spectrum of things that sexism pushes on women … but I know too many women who don’t get it and have never gotten it at all. (I don’t know a single one who has, actually.) We all just work for our bread. Out of the women I know at work even, perhaps two of them even wear makeup habitually. SO I’d hesitate to compare the two directly. No one ever died from not having manicured eyebrows, but childbirth or pregnancy alone can kill.
Janis..I believe in the rainbow pony world. I want to live in a world where men don’t want to f*ck sick and weak women, because they percieve a greater birth risk. It’s apparent that men, since the dawn of Patriarchy have selected for themselves women that are small and weak in stature. I want to live in a world where technology is used appropriately and the Earth is sustained and where communities of women care for the children of women, and sick or small women are not forced into pregnancies, where marriage does not exist for men, that they cannot legally own or separate women, and where I can walk and not see a picture of a woman’s ass or boobs in my face. Where is this world? How do we get to it? I think the answer is technology; more women in the science field, because well, they are smarter and better at it, and we will produce technology that allows free energy. No more of this drilling and crude technological procedures based on principles of force and destruction.
In the meantime, Boxer’s strong display just reminds us why it is so necessary for parity in rulership. What if Boxer wasn’t there? How different would it have been. How different has it always been?
Yesterday I posted a comment here asking why the article “Boxer: We Don’t Restrict Viagara [sic] Funding, Why Restrict Abortion” was published at The New Agenda. It was my understanding when TNA began that it would be an organization for women that brought pro-lifers and pro-choicers together to work on issues other than abortion, an organization that didn’t take a position on abortion.
Apparently this is no longer the case. Today I see that apparently it is also verboten to ask what happened to that plan as my comment has been disappeared.
So much for The “New” Agenda, just old pro-abortion politics as usual. One less website for me to bother reading.
Hey Tinderella, your comment wasn’t deleted you just posted it on the article “YOU Make the Difference” which was the one on top of the blog yesterday. It’s still there
I’ll repost an answer to your question here as well,
Cynthia Ruccia said:
Tinderella—-I’ll answer your question, but you might get a better response if you also post it under the article you are referring to.
The New Agenda takes absolutely NO position on abortion one way or another. The purpose of the post you cite is the hypocrisy involved, not about a position anyone might hold on the subject of abortion.
Many people feel that regardless of how a man might vote on abortion, they have made sure that their drugs for erectile dysfunction are ALWAYS covered in whatever healthcare bill gets voted on.
Leave your Response Want an avatar? Get a gravatar!
Community Room
February 6, 2012 at 4:25 pm
January 30, 2012 at 2:36 pm
January 26, 2012 at 4:38 pm
January 23, 2012 at 1:04 pm
January 15, 2012 at 11:37 am
January 9, 2012 at 6:36 pm
January 7, 2012 at 10:10 pm
January 5, 2012 at 9:31 am
BUILD your NETWORK
Our Network of College Women
Protecting our Teenage Girls
We’re in the Media »
Click to see our latest stories in the media
More Stories »Recent Comments
The Latest from our Blog
Archives
Pioneer Mentors
Blogroll
Find us Online
Subscribe Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)
The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...