About a week later, she became embroiled in a separate controversy after posting about terminology such as “birthing people” and “menstruators.”
That post prompted criticism from transgender advocates and others who argued that inclusive reproductive-health terminology does not erase women but acknowledges that some transgender men and nonbinary people can also become pregnant.
Major outlets including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times documented the backlash.
The episode demonstrated another side of celebrity activism.
The same ability to communicate instantly and provocatively can produce enormous support one day and intense criticism the next.
Midler subsequently explained that she had not intended to be exclusionary.
But the controversy reinforced something already evident from the Viagra tweet:
Bette Midler was not interested in staying quiet.
The Tweet Wasn't Really About Viagra
Years later, the reason the joke remains memorable is obvious.
It wasn't really about erectile-dysfunction medication.
And it certainly wasn't a serious campaign to prohibit Viagra.
It was about perceived hypocrisy.
It was about anger.
It was about bodily autonomy.
And it was about using comedy as a weapon at a moment when millions of Americans were struggling to understand a historic shift in constitutional law.
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court changed the American legal landscape by overturning Roe v. Wade.
Three days later, Bette Midler responded with one sentence designed not for a courtroom but for the internet.
Some people thought it was brilliant.
Others thought the comparison was ridiculous or offensive.
Still others began debating the actual medical uses of sildenafil.
That diversity of reactions was almost the point.
Midler took a subject that was already consuming America and found a way to make people argue about it from another angle.
She did what comedians and provocateurs have always done.
She made the argument unforgettable.
More Than a Viral Burn
It is tempting to remember the episode simply as a celebrity “clapback.”
But that misses why it traveled so widely.
The tweet arrived during a profound transition in American law.
The Supreme Court's own records show that Dobbs formally reversed the lower-court judgment on June 24, 2022, with the majority overturning the constitutional abortion framework established by Roe and Casey.
Midler's response represented one corner of the enormous cultural reaction that followed.
Her joke did not explain the law.
It did not capture the arguments of people who supported the ruling.
It did not resolve the ethical questions surrounding abortion.
It wasn't supposed to.
It was satire—deliberately exaggerated, deliberately crude and deliberately easy to remember.
And in that respect, it succeeded spectacularly.
Bette Midler had spent decades understanding how to command an audience.
Onstage, she could do it with a song.
Onscreen, she could do it with a performance.
In June 2022, she needed only a tweet.
The country was debating reproductive rights, constitutional interpretation and government power.
Midler entered that debate with Viagra and a punchline.
And the internet did the rest.