This is a solo post by Ellis
I am truly grateful to Rush Limbaugh and Rick Sanitorium . . . er, Santorum, for advancing the notion that family planning has evolved into a basic human right in modern society.
Let me make clear from the start, this is not a partisan essay. It’s about ethics.
First, Santorum makes the case that contraceptives cause unwanted pregnancies. Since their two purposes are to prevent conception (that’s the literal meaning of contraception) and – in the cases of condoms and some spermicides – to prevent disease transmission, I believe Santorum has advanced the practices he abhors. Ever-growing numbers of Americans will see how preposterous his notions are.
But Rush is now my hero. This moralistic hypocritical blowhard has advanced the cause of family planning – I believe – beyond his wildest fears. Recently, Sandra Fluke, a women’s rights activist and law school senior, testified before a group of Democrats in the House of Reprehensibles that employers should pay for contraceptive coverage as part of their healthcare packages for employees.
Limbaugh equated that notion with Fluke asking to be paid to have sex. “What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.”
Whether or not you agree with the idea that employers or the government should cover contraception, you have to admit that calling a woman who likes sex a slut is off the deep end. The question now is, will Sandra Fluke keep the controversy going by suing Limbaugh – you know, the great American moralist who was feeding his drug addiction with unlawful prescriptions – for slander?
The unspoken reality in all of this is that women who have sex without birth control are more likely to have unwanted pregnancies. And women who have unwanted pregnancies are the ones who get abortions, even if abortions are unlawful. DUH!
Considering that polls show that 98 percent of Catholic women use contraceptives at some point, and that a lot of, if not most, women who use contraceptives are married, Rush rushed headfirst – a la Curly of the Three Stooges – into a swinging piece of lumber. And we all get to laugh.
I cannot adequately express how grateful I am to Limbaugh and Santorum for finally exposing this anti-family-planning coven of backward thinkers, and for bringing the danger of their thinking to light.
And I am eternally grateful that I married a “slut.”