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Is Viagra Health Care?

by Brian Caulfield 

So how did that Viagra talk go? Not the one with your doctor that Internet and TV ads ask men to have, but the one with your representative in Washington. Let me explain.

At some point during the many weeks of health insurance debate in the House and Senate, and amid the drafting of thousand-page bills, the issue of ED (you know the acronym) came up, with one senator complaining that men’s Viagra pills are covered but not female “reproductive health” items such as abortion. I strained to see the connection between Viagra and abortion but the senator seemed to place them both in the area of medical privacy.

In similar fashion, some feminists bemoaned the fact that Viagra was included in the bill but not the more common female contraceptive Pill.  This baffled me too, until I had a “Viagra talk” with a friend who is more culturally and politically astute. I asked, naïvely, “What is the connection between a prescription that helps men overcome the lack of a natural function that could lead to the conception of a child, and a prescription that helps women suppress a natural function to prevent conception?” The two pills seem to be designed for totally different purposes.

My friend said that the connection has to do with the highest value of our culture – sexual pleasure. Viagra helps men achieve greater arousal and the Pill helps women have sex without an unwanted “side effect,” i.e., a baby. The two pills work in perfect harmony for the intended purpose of unhindered sexual pleasure.

Oh, I thought, as my jaw dropped. Here I was thinking in the terms of Catholic moral theology, and all I really had to do to understand the health care debate was watch an episode of “Sex and the City.”

Of course, it’s probably safe to say that the majority of men who take Viagra do not intend to get their spouses pregnant. The pleasure principle is more likely the motivation. So, in the way we live today, the equation between “the blue pill” and the contraceptive Pill does make some sense.

But the fact remains that Viagra and the Pill can be used for totally different purposes, one good and the other evil, which is why the Catholic Church has voiced a consistent ban on contraception and remained relatively silent on the moral nature of Viagra and other ED treatments. The Church teaches that each sexual encounter between spouses must be open to the transmission of new life in order to fully express the level of love and trust that is inscribed in the “marital act.” Thus, contraception is an offense against the very love that husband and wife should offer one another in their “one flesh” union.

Viagra, on the other hand, may actually address directly a point of canon law (canon 1084.1, to be exact) which lists as one of the “diriment impediments” to a valid marriage: “Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have sexual intercourse,” that is, the inability to consummate a marriage. With Viagra, men entering a marriage with an ED problem would have effective medical assistance in consummating their vows.

In this sense, Viagra can be seen as legitimate health care, because it corrects a physical function that is part of a healthy relationship between husband and wife. Now, it should be used only by married men for relations with their wives, so the inclusion of Viagra-type prescriptions in the current health care bills, which make no such distinctions, probably does not pass moral muster. In any event, these are just some of the “Viagra talking points” you may want to share with your D.C. representatives.

I don’t mean to be flippant or cause titters among readers. I simply want to show how seriously the Catholic faith takes matters of morality and sexuality, maintaining important distinctions that the culture can no longer comprehend. The Church has been involved in these issues a lot longer than Congress or the media, and has mature answers to adult questions that carefully weigh human nature, the Commandments and natural law.

This is one reason why the Catholic bishops perform a valuable service to our nation when they seek to inform legislation that touches on moral matters. Indeed, the U.S. bishops have come under fire in recent weeks for their strong opposition to tax dollars going for abortion in the health bills that were drafted in the House and the Senate. They have been credited, or excoriated, for their supporting role in the Stupak amendment in the House that bars federal funds for most abortions. And they are holding out for similar language in the Senate bill. “Abortion is not health care because killing is not healing,” states their striking and effective ad.

The bishops have been successful in their principled stand not because they are imposing religious mandates, but because they are proposing a moral view that includes respect for all human beings, from the frail elderly and dying, to mothers and their unborn babies. Polls show that Americans do not want abortion paid for in the health bill. So the bishops really have the hearts of the people in mind more than do those who would force abortion coverage against the conscientious objection of millions of Americans. And certainly more than any legislator who would wrongly equate Viagra with abortion.

 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)