Sandra Fluke Is My Hero

During his now imfamous rant, Rush Limbaugh seemed to imply that the amount of birth control a woman takes can be used to determine how much sex she's having. There are a number of reasons why this is both funny and disturbing.

Once, after some particularly excellent love making, my wife said, "That was so good I might have to take two pills." Then we laughed. Birth control pills need only be taken once a day regardless of how often a woman has sex. Other methods of birth control like the patch, the ring, depo, and IUD's need to be administered even less frequently. They're not like Viagra which users need to take every time they have sex. I find it interesting that the Catholic church is just fine with covering Viagra. Presumably that drug promotes procreation, but if it's an issue of life and death, I ask how many people have ever died of erectile disfunction? Women die every day of unintended pregnancy, but I digress.

I grew up knowing about sex, about how the human body worked, about how people get pregnant, and about how birth control works, so Limbaugh's comments took me aback because I thought everybody knew how birth control works. After all 98% of American women use birth control, which means 98% of American men do too. How could anyone be ignorant about something this pervasive?

It turns out Rush isn't the only one who fundamentally misunderstands the inner workings of the human reproductive cycle. Many people didn't even raise an eyebrow at the implication that providing no-cost birth control is tantamount to subsidising prostitution. Why?

In Utah, this legislative session, congress passed a bill that outlaws any sex education at all. Other states have passed and are passing similar laws, attempting to keep the general public ignorant of how their bodies work. By the time the average American graduates from high school, she will know more about the American Modernist movement than her own body.

And that's why Sandra Fluke is important. Her efforts to bring the discussion about women's rights to the fore of American politics succeeded more thoroughly than she could have imagined when she first got involved with the issue. Being called a slut and having the guts to stand up and make a very public fight out of it have made a huge difference.

This debacle is more than an idiotic talk radio host overstepping his rhetorical authority. It is an opportunity for us to realize how important this fight is, and to educate ourselves, because we clearly have a fight on our hands, and we can't afford to lose. The stakes are too high. The winners of this fight will control women's bodies. Let's make sure it's women who win.