So Rushbo is stirring up trouble by equating contraception with prostitution. As Mistermix says, “slut” is the new “liberal.”
At Cafe Hayek, an economics professor at George Mason University named Donald J. Boudreaux defends Rush, thus:
Mr. Limbaugh reacted to Ms. Fluke’s own violation of standards of civility. A truly civilized person doesn’t demand that other people pick up the bill for her contraception. A truly civilized person – especially one who can afford to be a full-time student at a prestigious law school – would refuse any invitation to publicly play the role of a victim wronged by being told to pay for her own pills or condoms. A truly civilized person does not hold in contempt other people for their resistance to being forced to subsidize his or her ‘lifestyle choices’ (whatever those choices might be).
A truly civilized person doesn’t demand that other people pick up the bill for her contraception. But to be in an insurance risk pool means you do expect other people to pay for things, as provided in the policy. Likewise, you are paying for other peoples’ medical care. Is Professor Boudreaux opposed to the insurance industry?
By the professor’s logic, a truly civilized person doesn’t demand that other people pick up the bill for his appendectomy. Or his prostate exam. Or his chemotherapy. Or to have his broken bones set. We should pay for these things ourselves, or suffer in silence.
Of course, we know what’s going on here. The particular item being discussed is associated with women. In particular, women who are having sex. And every right wing man in the country, as well as a disturbing number of women, has reverted to being a nine-year-old who just found a stash of Hustler magazines in the attic.
Contraception isn’t health care to them. It’s about women! And sex! Booga booga booga!
Never mind that there are sober, practical, dollar-and-cent reasons why including no-copay coverage for contraception won’t cost us anything extra and might save us all money in the long run. Logically, insurance companies ought to charge more for policies that don’t cover contraception.
For a generally healthy woman in her fertile years, which is a big chunk of her adult life, fertility is her single biggest health care issue. Whether she is pregnant or not is a rather huge factor in her life, and the possibility of pregnancy follows her like a shadow, whether she is faithfully married or in a monogamous relationship or a sex worker. For most women, putting limits on how many children we have is necessary for living a standard middle-class life in the 21st century. Using contraception is a health issue.
I’ve observed for a long time that a lot of men really don’t “get” that; they don’t associate sex with pregnancy as much as women do. And as revealed by sick, twisted bleeper Craig Bannister, some of them don’t even know how contraception actually works. They seem to think the amount of money a woman must pay for contraception is an indicator of how much sex she is having. Craig Bannister may have to take a pill every time he has sex, but it doesn’t work that way for women.
Younger women these days are not accustomed to being shamed for being sexually active. I hope this is a wake-up call for them.
Update: Via Whiskey Fire,, another Troglodyte heard from:
If we remove “slut†from our discourse, we thereby discard half the reward of chastity, namely the superiority of prestige that the virtuous woman should rightly enjoy in comparison to those who are less virtuous.
I’ll pause a moment to let you stop sputtering, or laughing, whichever the case may be.
The Left has substituted the clinical-sounding term “sexually active†for more value-laden terms used to describe promiscuity, because the Left is actively seeking to destroy the system of traditional moral values that condemns sex outside marriage.
And which moral values, oddly, rarely were used to punish men, but only to keep women shamed and submissive and controlled. Funny how that worked.
When we hear about a woman in the Middle East somewhere condemned to death because she was raped, while her rapist is considered blameless, we are all horrified, shocked, outraged across the political spectrum. But what our native Taliban is trying to pull differs only in degree. And for some of them, it differs only in degree because they know they wouldn’t get away with taking it further.
We can laugh at the hysteria — “Republicans are coming to steal your ladyparts!†— but we cannot ignore the fact that the Left is engaged in a Culture War offensive with potentially serious consequences.
I think this guy just earned today’s Toolie Award.
