If people justified restrictions on abortion by appealing to divine will, she suggested, why shouldn't the same logic apply to erectile dysfunction?
“Time to ban Viagra,” she wrote before delivering the explicit punchline.
Contemporary reporting from NME documented the post and its connection to the Supreme Court decision.
Midler was not literally proposing pharmaceutical legislation.
The tweet was satire.
The purpose was to create a comparison between government intervention involving reproductive decisions and medical treatment involving male sexual function.
In effect, Midler was asking her audience to consider why one form of medical intervention could be culturally accepted while another deeply personal reproductive decision could be subjected to extensive government restriction.
Her choice of Viagra made the joke immediately understandable.
Few prescription drugs have greater name recognition.
And because Viagra is so closely associated in popular culture with male sexual performance, Midler could compress a complicated political argument into a single provocative sentence.
Why the Joke Resonated
The post arrived at exactly the kind of moment when political jokes can spread exceptionally quickly.
Millions of Americans were trying to process the consequences of Dobbs.
People were angry, relieved, frightened, celebratory, confused or uncertain depending on their views and circumstances.
Social media turned into a vast national argument.
Midler's tweet gave abortion-rights supporters something emotionally different from another legal explanation.
It gave them a punchline.
Humor can serve several functions during politically charged moments.
It can simplify an argument.
It can relieve tension.
It can reinforce solidarity among people who already agree.
And it can ridicule an opposing position by carrying its perceived logic to an extreme conclusion.
Midler's Viagra comment did all four.
For supporters, the joke highlighted what they regarded as a double standard in discussions of bodily autonomy.
For critics, however, it oversimplified a complicated legal and moral dispute.
And that disagreement helped the post travel even further.
The Argument Behind the Punchline
Strip away the celebrity and profanity, and Midler's joke touches on a serious philosophical question:
When should government have authority over private medical decisions?
There is no universally accepted answer.
People who support abortion rights generally emphasize bodily autonomy, privacy, equality and the ability of patients to make reproductive decisions with medical professionals.
Opponents of abortion often begin from a fundamentally different premise: that abortion involves not only the pregnant person's interests but also the moral status or rights of fetal life.
That difference is crucial.
From the anti-abortion perspective, comparing abortion with erectile-dysfunction medication can therefore be misleading because the two medical situations involve different ethical considerations.
From Midler's perspective—and that of many people who shared her joke—the comparison was not intended as a complete ethical analogy.
It was a rhetorical device about government control over bodies.
That is why such a short tweet could trigger such a large argument.
People were not really debating Viagra.
They were debating competing ideas about liberty, responsibility, sexuality, pregnancy, morality and state power.
What Dobbs Actually Said
Because Midler's comment was comedic, it is worth separating the joke from the legal reasoning behind the ruling.
The Supreme Court majority did not rule that pregnancy is “God's will.”
Nor was that the legal rationale of Dobbs.
The majority's reasoning focused on constitutional interpretation, history and precedent.