Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and "prostitute" after she testified before Congress about the cost of birth control, and said that she should film her sexual activity and "post the videos online so we can all watch."
People are shocked. I am not. This is Rush Limbaugh. You know what you're getting, and what you're getting a misogynist jackass. Anyone who is surprised by this is someone who wants to pretend that Rush Limbaugh is something that he's not.
But there is something else that Rush Limbaugh is: an important player in the conservative movement. A "giant", as Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) put it. The Republican Party is effectively unable to criticize him -- they're in thrall to him.
And so we see just how muted the GOP can be when one of its leading lights calls his political opponents "sluts": they say virtually nothing. Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) demurs when asked if Limbaugh should apologize, instead offering a bland "it was inappropriate" (just as inappropriate, in Boehner's view, as Democrats raising money off the remark. Why, exactly, that is "inappropriate" behavior on the part of the Democratic Party at all -- much less to the same degree as calling a woman a "prostitute" just because she uses birth control -- is left unsaid).
Other conservative organizations are demonstrating the same cowardice. Rae Chornenky, president of the National Federation of Republican Women, "doesn't want to discuss [it]", calling it "a sideshow." Alci Maldonado of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly tried to change the subject to the (spurious) freedom of religion argument, and Frances Rice, chairwoman of the National Black Republican Association, refused to comment on Limbaugh's statement at all. Failed GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina managed to call the language "insulting" and "incendiary", for which she was called to the carpet by Red State editor Erick Erickson, who said Fiorina "just [does] not get it" -- "it" being that Limbaugh was being sarcastic (women -- no sense of humor, amiright?).
For the most part, it seems that the modern GOP can be divided into two categories. People who agree with Limbaugh that the vast, vast majority of women are sluts and prostitutes whose sexual activity should be a matter of public record. And people who don't agree, but are too afraid to challenge the emerging orthodoxy within their party's base.
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This is a comment on the issue of health care insurance paying for contraception and not about Limbaugh.
In brief contraception for the vast majority is not a health care issue but a life style choice. The availability of contraception is not the issue. Even the cost of contraception is not the issue since it is available to many for little to no cost.
So the real issue who shall pay for a life style choice.
Should an employer be forced to pay for such private life style choices which they do not approve of?
Using the power of the law to force an employer (or the insurance company implying that no one has to pay for it since money grows on trees) to pay for such a choice is wrong.
If an employer can be forced to pay for this life style choice because it is about "health care" then why stop there? Why not include organic foods? Many do consider it caring for their health. (Yes this is a slippery slope argument and perhaps your upcoming article on sticky slopes will demonstrate that there is no such progression or expansion but as I see it there has been such expansion in the past as with the expanded meaning and use of the commerce clause.)
This "lifestyle/non-lifestyle" distinction doesn't do that much for me. If I break my arm playing sports, that's due to a "lifestyle" choice, but nobody indicates insurance shouldn't cover that. Viagra, same. Vasectomies, same. Virtually all elements of health care rise and fall in necessity based on "lifestyle" choices (if you never leave the bedroom, you probably will not break your leg, or catch infectious diseases). That's just not a viable standard for determining what care should be covered, and for obvious reasons we don't apply it in any other context.
Of course, birth control is often an even stronger candidate for coverage than any of these (Viagra, vasectomies), because it often serves health purposes independent of preventing pregnancy (e.g., prescribed for menstrual cramping or ovarian cysts). And even putting that aside, when there are health risks associated with normal human behavior, insurance should cover them -- that strikes me as a perfectly reasonable standard. Even to the extent there is a line-drawing problem, birth control isn't problematic because it easily falls inside whatever line we've already drawn.
A broken arm is not a life style choice even if it is a result of a sport via an accident, not even for Aron Ralston.
Viagra is treatment for a medical condition know as impotency, again not a life style choice.
Vasectomy is a life style choice. I do not know the Catholic Church's view of vasectomy, but it does violate Jewish law which states that one who undergoes a vasectomy is classified as a "kroos shafcha" (Deuteronomy 23:2) literally meaning one whose "flow has been cut” and is thus not acceptable in Judaism.
I for one would not have others pay for such a life style choice.
While birth control pill can and are used for a variety of uses other than contraception these other uses constitute a small portion of the use of oral contraceptive pills. (The use of oral contraception to prevent pregnancy for medical conditions is a real but very small number.)
While pregnancy can be a health risk, it is a normal and expected result of sexual intercourse, and luckily these days of minimal health risks. But to use use an extension of your analog of "when there are health risks associated with normal human behavior, insurance should cover them" then insurance should pay for the protective gear of pro football players or kids playing ice hockey.
But the real question is why should some pay for the conception free sex of others. Let those who engage in sex and enjoy it pay to avoid the consequences.
It's kind of hilarious that in a post about how Republicans don't want to talk about Limbaugh, even to make a pro forma condemnation before switching the subject back to the substantive policy, the only comments by a conservative are explicitly "not about Limbaugh."
"Let those who engage in sex and enjoy it pay to avoid the consequences."
(a) What if one doesn't enjoy the sex? What if one has been raped or (since conservatives tend to have a narrow definition of rape that doesn't include being blacked out during sex) coerced into sex? We already know conservatives don't want insurance to cover abortions that might result from such intercourse. They also don't think women should be able to prevent pregnancy? Ob-gyns don't see any slippery slop between medical prescriptions and devices that require a physician, and the laundry list of utterly non-medical items conservatives have been coming up with (organic food, knee pads).
(b) Why not let those who definitely ARE voluntarily trying to engage in and enjoy sex, the users of Viagra, pay for it? Why is sex a "lifestyle choice" for women, but a life necessity for men? (Telling, that.)
(c) "A broken arm is not a life style choice even if it is a result of a sport via an accident." Pregnancy isn't a "life style choice" either. Heck, conservatives don't even want whether one remains pregnant to be a choice. Let me try to make the analogy as SAT simple as possible:
Canyoneering:broken arm :: sex:pregnancy.
If women were demanding that insurers pay for something that would facilitate sex itself, these comparisons would make sense. But using an oral contraceptive doesn't make intercourse itself as a physical act easier or more enjoyable. (Indeed, for many women the Pill's side effects of weight gain, bloating and reduction of libido make sex LESS enjoyable.) If that's what this were about, women would be demanding coverage for lubricants, vibrators, and whatever else Limbaugh thought he was hearing Sandra Fluke say when she was talking about non-barrier contraceptives, such that he claimed in his faux-apology that she was describing her bedroom activities.
(Also, does anyone know why Limbaugh believes that the cost of oral contraceptives depends on how promiscuous one is? I haven't noticed any difference between what monogamous married women and their "round-heeled" friends pay. I heard similar remarks about the per-day cost of oral contraceptives from Limbaugh's fans, and now I'm worried that abstinence-only education has left us with a nation of conservative men who think the Pill IS like Viagra, something you pop before each act of intercourse.)
PG
As you decide what to say in your comments I get to decide what to say in mine and I decided to discuss the issue of who pays for contraception, a life style choice.
Your blanket statement about what conservatives want and don't want in your hypo (a) is not pertinent besides not reflecting my viewpoint.
Again with regards to (b) the issue isn't "is sex a life style choice" but who will pay for the choice of contraception.
And finally (c) where you state that pregnancy is not a life style choice. For your information pregnancy these days is a choice and planned or avoided or eliminated as decided by women with or without their partners. Choosing to ignore some of these options is another choice.
Each one of my three children were a choice and they certainly changed my life style.
One unfortunate fact is that for all too many women who choose to delay having children it becomes difficult if not impossible to have them due to diminished fertility as a women ages as well as potential genetic issues as the mother and father ages.
Finally as a corollary to Viagra, in post menopausal women it is common to have vaginal dryness which can be treated with medications which is paid by insurance since it is a medical condition. And yes it is a natural consequence of aging but aging is not a life style choice, yet.
As you decide what to say in your comments I get to decide what to say in mine and I decided to discuss the issue of who pays for contraception, a life style choice.
Of course! And I hope you grasped that David's post was not calling for taking away the GOP's right to decide what to say, but instead noting that silence can be as telling as speech. I'm applying the same point to your choice of speech.
And finally (c) where you state that pregnancy is not a life style choice. For your information pregnancy these days is a choice and planned or avoided or eliminated as decided by women with or without their partners. Choosing to ignore some of these options is another choice.
Each one of my three children were a choice and they certainly changed my life style.
Again, telling: I say pregnancy is not a lifestyle choice, and your response is that your children were a choice and they changed your lifestyle. I'm sure they did, but unless you're some kind of medical wonder, you as a man were never pregnant with them. So whether your lifestyle was changed by rearing children is irrelevant to what I'm saying about pregnancy.
The right to contraception and abortion is not about a right to avoid having offspring exist, because there is no such right. If I hire a surrogate to be implanted with my genetic material, and then decide I don't want a baby with my genes to exist, I can't do anything about it. In contrast, if she decides she doesn't want to be pregnant anymore, she can do something about it. It's a right of bodily liberty and integrity.
I could want very much to have my lifestyle changed by rearing children, but want this to happen through adoption and thus use contraception to ensure that a medical condition known as pregnancy -- not a lifestyle choice -- does not befall me.
By the way, if my sincerely held belief is that it's wrong to reproduce because overpopulation is destroying Mother Earth, would you say that as an employer, I shouldn't be forced to pay for the private lifestyle choice of my employees' families to reproduce? I.e. I shouldn't have to pay for pregnancies and deliveries that I find morally abhorrent? (Not to mention far more expensive than contraception.)
Forgot to include:
Vaginal dryness is not just a concern for women who have vaginal intercourse. So far as I know, the inability to get an erection when one wants to have an erection differs from vaginal dryness in that it does not have symptoms like:
Itching
Burning
Soreness
Urinary frequency or urgency.
(Actually, those symptoms in men sound more like various STDs, the treatment of which, pretty much everyone agrees, should be covered by health insurance.)
There are reasons to provide medical treatment for women's vaginal problems beyond whether those women will be useful sex partners for men. "Women are people too," and all that.
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