Rush Limbaugh decided to personally attack Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown University who testified before the congressional committee on birth control. For sharing her personal story about the high cost of her birth control Mr. Limbaugh labeled her both a slut and a prostitute. I am not going to address the name calling or equating a woman using birth control to being a prostitute because it is pointless to even bother. But I am going to break down his arguments.
Hormonal birth control is prescribed to many woman for health related purposes that are not related to preventing pregnancy. Birth control pills are prescribed for many female reproductive health problems such as -- ovarian cysts, heavy, irregular or painful periods, hormone imbalances, light or infrequent periods, early onset menopause, or even cystic acne. In many cases, hormonal birth control is effective in reducing these symptoms; it is not exclusively taken to prevent pregnancy.
Comparing the cost of hormone-based birth control to condoms. Rush and his staff "crunch the numbers" to try to show that hormone based birth control pills are not cost-effective. But comparing condoms to birth control is like comparing a raincoat to an umbrella. According to AmericanPregnancy.com, hormone-based birth control pills have a 93-97 percent success rate when used in real life conditions. And according to the same site, condoms have a 14-15 percent failure rate. So solely basing birth control on condom use would result in more unplanned pregnancies. Also according to AmericanPregnancy.com, the cost of delivering a baby could reach as high as $6,000-8,000, which does not include prenatal care or the extensive costs of a complicated pregnancy, especially one requiring a Caesarian section.
The Tax Payer is on the hook for birth control Rush also claimed that the "tax payer" is somehow paying for Sandra Fluke's birth control. The subject being debated on congress had nothing to do with the federal government spending any tax dollars on anyone's insurance. The bill stipulates that either the employer or the health insurance company pays for birth control, it says absolutely nothing about the government paying for anything.
Rush claimed the women are having too much sex and that is why they need so much birth control -- The way hormonal birth control works, a woman has to take it for an entire month and stay on it for months whether she is having sex daily or once a year. The amount of sex is irrelevant.
Married couples should not have hormonal birth control as an option for helping them control the size of their families? Rush doesn't address this directly but the vast majority of women including Catholic women in the U.S. use some form of birth control. The Guttmacher Institute in a new report, "Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use" showed that, "among all women who have had sex, 99 percent have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning" Are married women who use birth control sluts in Rush's world view? Most married women only have one sexual partner, not exactly a slut.
And, of course, his last ridiculous statement was simply made to get press more than anything else.
Since "WE" are paying for it, these women should videotape their sexual encounters. According to the proposed legislation, the health insurance providers or the employers would be paying for the birth control, NOT the taxpayer. And even with that insane logic, then Rush might as well start producing some of his own tapes; after all, a health insurance plan most likely helped pay for his Viagra. So everyone paying a premium to the same insurance company better start demanding videos of his erections, just because they helped pay for them.
And if he is going to make personal attacks -- Rush Limbaugh -- married four times, yet has no children, three of his wives were of childbearing age, so either he is sterile or someone was using birth control. No one knows this for sure, perhaps he successfully used the rhythm method with each wife and through some miracle no one got pregnant. Rush has had problems abusing prescription drugs himself and was caught entering the country with the erectile dysfunction drug Viagara. So is it acceptable for a health insurance company to pay for a drug that would increase the sexual capacity for a man, but not for birth control for a woman? That seems like ridiculous hypocrisy and most Americans would agree, in fact according to A Kaiser Family Foundation survey nearly 2/3 of American adults favored Obama's birth control policy.
Rush Limbaugh is a blowhard who says crazy things to get attention and press. He might have finally gone too far. Attacking half of the adult population directly is not always the best game plan for winning over converts to his cause. The more extreme he gets the smaller his audience will become and hopefully one day he will become completely irrelevant. Or maybe all of his "ditto heads" will forgo family planning and birth control. Something tells me they won't.