The View Panel Tussle Over Bill Restricting Viagra Access

This morning, the panel talked about a new bill introduced in the Ohio state legislature to regulate the sale of Viagra, as a clear symbolic response to the debate over hormonal birth control that has been raging during the primary season, and whose flames were stoked by Rush Limbaugh over a week ago. This bill would require men seeking Viagra prescriptions to consult a sex therapist, have their hearts checked out and have their partners sign a notarized affidavit confirming their impotency. Yowza! Although many in the studio audience applauded, Joy Behar noted that the handful of men in the crowd were definitely not clapping.

Sherri Shepherd saw this as clearly analogous to the birth control debate, arguing that the problem with the issue was “all of these men making decisions about a woman’s body,” while not understanding that birth control is used to treat many medical conditions, in addition to preventing pregnancy. She thought the debate should be reframed in that way, rather than characterizing birth control as a “lifestyle choice” (at this point Joy piped up with “It is a lifestyle choice!…Go out and do it!”). Elisabeth Hasselbeck saw it as the opening salvo in a “gender war,” and thought that men and women coming up with different ways to stick it to each other over this issue was unproductive, while Barbara Walters seemed exhausted by the issue, which she said has come up in just about every presidential election. You can see the full clip here, via ABC: