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Senate Kills GOP's Anti-Contraception Bill, Despite Rush Limbaugh's Slut Shaming
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 1, 2012
Modified Mar 5, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 1, 2012
Modified Mar 5, 2012
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The Senate voted today to shoot down a GOP effort to let employers and health insurance companies deny coverage for contraceptives if they have religious or moral objections. After four days of hearings and speeches, the vote went 51-48 in favor of President Obama's current birth control policy. But just because that debate is over for now doesn't mean that Rush Limbaugh didn't do his darndest to turn all the negative attention toward himself before the vote—yesterday, Limbaugh called Georgetown Law School student and activist Sandra Fluke "a slut" for arguing that contraception should be covered by health insurance. Listen to him bloviate below!
Fluke was supposed to be a Democratic witness at one of the Congressional hearings this week on the debate, but Darrell Issa, the committee chair at the hearing, initially prevented her from speaking because he said the hearing was about religious liberty, not birth control. She was eventually allowed to speak, and she passionately argued for the need for birth control for both reproductive and broader medical reasons, including cysts. Limbaugh was disgusted by his interpretation of what she said—in his view, Fluke was promoting casual sex:
What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] 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.
He followed that by saying, "ok, so she's not a slut. She's round-heeled"—"round-heeled" is an old-fashioned term for promiscuity. He also took his rage out on Fluke's parents for raising such a slutty child: “Can you imagine if you're her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be?” he said. “Your daughter goes up to a congressional hearing conducted by the Botox-filled Nancy Pelosi and testifies she's having so much sex she can't afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope.”
Outrage over Limbaugh's comments were swift: "I am just aghast," Rep. Carolyn Maloney told The Huffington Post. "If the far right can attack people like Sandra Fluke, women are going to be afraid to speak because they're going to be called terrible words. It's an attempt to silence people that are speaking out for women." In a statement, she further called on Republicans to repudiate Limbaugh:
I call on responsible leaders of the Republican Party to repudiate the kind of hateful speech displayed by Rush Limbaugh. This despicable attack on an honorable young woman is a new low in a season of lows. Anyone on the other side of the aisle -- in a chamber where people still refer to each other as ‘Gentlemen’ and ‘Gentlewomen’-- who stands silent signals by their silence approval of such language," Maloney said in a statement.
Limbaugh's response? On his show today, he channeled Billionaire Rick Santorum-lover Foster Friess, offering to "happily buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want" in lieu of contraception.
Tagged
birth control
carolyn maloney
contraception
republicans
rush limbaugh
sandra fluke
senate
slut shaming
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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