That's just what it is. He thinks birth control works like his Viagra: more sex requires more pills. Yeesh!

Thinks? Limbaugh?

That's just what it is. He thinks birth control works like his Viagra: more sex requires more pills. Yeesh!

He's not confused. You don't think huge numbers of women students are going broke purchasing birth control do you? As widely publicized the local Target near Georgetown offers oral contraception for less than $10 a month and yet Ms Fluke said a married couple had to drop that from their budget?

Ms. Fluke was definitely trying to make the case the women students at Georgetown can not afford to have sex, there is no doubt about that in her testimony.

Lastly, Mr. Limbaugh is an entertainer but his own admission who illustrates the absurd by using the absurd. He is more SNL than Meet the Press. Just because you do not see his humor does not mean it is not valid. Bill Maher has said much much worse and yet the President's election PAC has accepted $1 million from him without any criticism whatsoever. Someone please explain the difference there?

Ms. Fluke was definitely trying to make the case the women students at Georgetown can not afford to have sex, there is no doubt about that in her testimony.

Actually Don there is doubt about that since she never talked about sex in her testimony. Maybe instead of assuming you should actually listen to the testimony. Her testimony was that the cost of birth control can sometimes run into the thousands of dollars per year. Her friend needed birth control in order to treat a medical condition that, because it went untreated, resulted in her friend's ovary being removed. If you had bothered to listen to the testimony this is what she said and what her testimony was about. You of all people should not fall for hyperbole over actuality.

He's not confused. You don't think huge numbers of women students are going broke purchasing birth control do you? As widely publicized the local Target near Georgetown offers oral contraception for less than $10 a month and yet Ms Fluke said a married couple had to drop that from their budget?

Did you even listen to the testimony Rob? Did you do a cross-analysis of what it normally costs? Or did you just read an article that said there was a Target ad of which you did not even bother to verify? I mean honestly- really?

I don't want to discount RobDon's comments too easily, because largely, he is correct about his most important point. Rush is an entertainer. At the same time, there's a few problems with this.

First, entertainment has a defining point. If you looked at my TiVo, you'd see a month's worth of House shows taped. From this, you could make the assertion that I like that show, or at least that I like that kind of humor. In the same way, Rush's comments define his audience. While it is frightening to think that a grown man could say the things he's said, it's even more frightening to think that thousands of Americans could listen and be entertained by those things. His words are defining his audience as bigots, entertained by the bigoted comments made by their entertainer. I worry about an audience who could be entertained by a speaker referring to our first lady as "upity" or casually referring back to high school rhetoric, which labeled promiscuous men as studs and promiscuous girls as sluts. It's the same kind of childishness I'd expect in a high school hallway, not a national political discussion.

Second, someone in the republican party left the keys to the party on Rush's desk. Once, Rush used his radio show to make comments about the conservative political environment. Now, he's helping set the stage for that same political environment. As a result, he's walking the fence between political entertainer and political leader, and unfortunately, he doesn't have the talent or intellect to be a political leader. He's brash, crude and ultimately demeaning. These may be traits his audience appreciates, and possibly even emulates, but these fail to live up to effective political rhetoric. Eventually, someone in the republican party is going to have to learn to drive and steal the keys back for the party, but I don't think it's going to happen in this election.

Finally, Rush doesn't seem to care that he, Bill O'Reilly (who made similar comments on his show last night) and a few others on Fox are the cover face of the republican party. They make blatant, bigoted comments, display their ignorance and childishness for the world to see, and care nothing for the damage they've done to the republican party. In the same way that I'd never fly a confederate flag, wear a ghost costume or carry a bible in public, I'd be ashamed to be a republican, in today's GOP.

Transcript from Fluke's testimony:

Fluke- Leader Pelosi, members of Congress good morning and thank you for calling this hearing on women's health and for allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage regulation.

My name is Sandra Fluke and I'm a third year student at Georgetown Law School. I'm also a past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ and I'd like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thanks so much for being here today. We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we're so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan, medical advice of the Institute of Medicine. I attend a Jesuit Law School that does not provide contraceptive coverage in it's student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens, as a result, employees at religiously affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens. We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women. Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic and Jesuit institutions.

When I look around my campus I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage and, especially in the last week, I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis I hear from yet another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously affiliated employer and they tell me that they have suffered financially, emotionally, and medically because of this lack of coverage. And so I am here today to share their voices and I want to thank you for allowing them, not me, to be heard.

Without insurance coverage contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that's practically an entire summer's salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy. One told us about how embarrassed and just powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance. And she had to turn and walk away because she couldn't afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice, but to go without contraception. Just last week a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn't fit it in to their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face this same choice. And some might respond that contraception is available in lots of other ways. Unfortunately that's just not true. Women's health clinics provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitively documented these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.

How can Congress consider the Fortenberry, Rubio, and Blunt legislation that would allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraception coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up and take care of the resulting medical crises? Particularly when so many legislators are attempting to de-fund those very same clinics.

These denials of contraceptive coverage impact real people. In the worst cases women who need this medication for other medical reasons suffer very dire consequences. A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown's insurance because it's not intended to prevent pregnancy. Unfortunately under many religious institution's insurance plans it wouldn't be; there would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Senator Blunt's amendment, Senator Rubio's bill, or Representative Fortenberry's bill there's no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs. When this exception does exist these exceptions don't accomplish their well intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers, rather than women and their doctors, dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, a woman's health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body. In sixty-five percent of the cases at our school our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms. For my friend and twenty percent of the women in her situation she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verification of her illness from her doctor her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She's gay so clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her. After months of paying over one hundred dollars out of pocket, she just couldn't afford her medication anymore and she had to stop taking it.

I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she'd been in the emergency room, she'd been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, "it was so painful I woke up thinking I'd been shot." Without her taking the birth control a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result. On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony she was sitting in a doctor's office trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe. Since last year's surgery she's been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She's thirty-two years old. As she put it, "if my body indeed does enter early menopause no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy, that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn't cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it." Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age, increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, she may never be able to conceive a child.

Some may say that my friend's tragic story is rare, but it's not. I wish it were. One woman told us that doctors believe that she has endometriosis, but that can't be proven without surgery so the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication, the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.

Recently another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she's struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified not to have access to it. Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown policy she hasn't been reimbursed for her medication since last August. I sincerely pray that we don't have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously. Because this is the message contraception sends: a woman's reproductive health care isn't a necessity, isn't a priority.

One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn't covered on the insurance and she assumed that's how Georgetown's insurance handled all of women's reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped she didn't go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections. Because she thought insurance wasn't going to cover something like that, something that was related to a woman's reproductive health. As one other student put it, "this policy communicates to female students that our school doesn't understand our needs."

These are not feelings that male fellow students experience and they're not burdens that male students must shoulder. In the media lately some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enrolled in a Catholic school? We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally; to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success. We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of cura personalis; to care for the whole person by meeting all of our medical needs. We expected that when we told our university of the problems this policy created for us as students they would help us. We expected that when ninety-four percent oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for completely unsubsidized by the university. We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should've gone to school elsewhere. And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the twenty-first century anyone can think it's acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

Many of the women who's stories I've shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church; it is a struggle for access to the health care we need. The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and universities appreciate the modifications the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that, that is something we can all agree upon.

Thank you very much.

Seriously the word 'sex' is never mentioned once in her entire testimony. She does mention sexual health twice and that is it. She never talks about the sexuality of women (unless you consider the part where she talks about how silly it was for Georgetown to assume that a gay woman was needing birth control to prevent pregnancy). The only way you could have walked away concluding that her testimony was about all the sex that Georgetown girls are having is if you either a. never listened to the testimony and instead allowed conservative slants to persuade your understanding of her statements or b. selectively listened to statements made by Fluke in order to support a view point you had already concluded prior to her testimony.

As for the cost of birth control it also depends on what type. It can cost anywhere from 15$/mo to 150$/mo. It depends on what kind of birth control you're using and how it's meant to be taken. And the different types are used to treat different medical conditions. But the fact that you'd make that statement- that there was a Target ad offering birth control for 10$- gets back to the point Maddow made on last night's broadcast. You don't understand how birth control works and so you think that you can just take a coupon out of an ad and that will cover every woman every where for every type of birth control. What is more you make the assumption that a couple in which the students are attending school full time can actually spare 10$ extra a month. Which is quite arrogant on your part if I might say so.

Sorry but this is where you and I have been butting heads lately. It's either that you just don't want to hear the different view or you're using selective reasoning instead of taking the big picture in and since that's not like you it's somewhat infuriating.

I'd also like to make one more point: if it costs so little to cover birth control (just using your own logic here) then why would a health insurance provider object to covering it? If it's such an unimportant cost why would it be a big deal, hmm? Especially when you look at the consequences of the lack of coverage and compare that to having coverage.

Sighhhs.

Thanks for posting, Mouzer!

Mouzer, are you saying that most women use birth control for something other than sex? I'm confused. Because Ms. Fluke's testimony was certainly meaning "most women" at least students of the university.

Without insurance coverage contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that's practically an entire summer's salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy.

She seems to think that birth control costs "for a lot of students" is $3,000 and that 40% of Georgetown females need contraception that they can't afford. Are you suggesting that these 40% are not needing it for sex?

That's actually the whole point Rob. 100% of women can benefit from using the contraceptive pill to reduce the chance of developing ovarian or uterus cancer, as well as a long list of other health benefits. Even women, who plan to conceive, can benefit from taking the pill during the months prior to when she wants to conceive, for these same purposes. This isn't even hard information to get. It's on dozens of medical websites, printed on the packaging of some contraceptive pills and repeated over and over on blogs like these. This is why it's a female health issue.

I'm confused.

That's the most accurate thing you've said yet, but you've drawn the wrong conclusion. Confusion signals a problem with your understanding of things, not with other people's understanding. All men, or at least all biological males, should just shut up about women's issues until they first make an effort to understand those issues thoroughly. Sandra Fluke understands those issues from a lifetime of living with them. You, Rob, need to stop and make a diligent effort to honestly look into these matters with empathy and humility, rather than being so judgmental. If you'd just do some basic research, and listen to the women who surround you, then maybe you're confusion would go away. Confusion, like pain, exists to let you know that something is wrong with you.

Yes Rob. Women take birth control for multiple reasons which was the whole point of her testimony. Go back and read through her statements. Her point is and was that women use birth control for multiple reasons and that depending on what type of birth control you need it can be expensive. This is why insurance should cover birth control and not opt out. And since birth control has the benefit of preventing so many health concerns it's in the insurance company's best interest to not only provide coverage to women, but to do so as part of the preventative care clause of the Affordable Care Act. Thus we give women a chance to care for themselves and prevent future disasters like cancer.

Birth control =/= for birth control

I suppose this is like the global warming debate in so many regards. People are too damned occupied w/ the fact that since it says 'warming' in the title that must mean if the weather gets cooler for a period that global warming is debunked. The fact that, that's not even remotely how global warming works or what the name ever was intended to imply completely escapes people because they take the phrasing too literally.

Family planning and effective birth control have reduced the number of abortions.

If we don't make the baby to begin with, there's no worry about whether or not it's wanted, afforded, etc.

But, oh yeah, sex is dirty and nasty and should be for purposes of procreation only!

We just don't seem ready for a grown-up discussion about sex and family planning in this country. The fact that hormone therapy is necessary for women's health in a significant percentage of cases that have nothing to do with contraception can't be gotten to until we can stop sniggering behind our hands about vaginas and penises.

Look, spare me the lecture. I participate in dialog and welcome facts contrary to my position or understanding. I've never said there are not other reasons for using "the pill" other than to prevent pregnancy, but the majority women take it for that purpose.

The most common reason U.S. women use oral contraceptive pills is to prevent pregnancy, but 14% of pill users—1.5 million women—rely on them exclusively for noncontraceptive purposes. The study documenting this finding, “Beyond Birth Control: The Overlooked Benefits of Oral Contraceptive Pills,” by Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, also found that more than half (58%) of all pill users rely on the method, at least in part, for purposes other than pregnancy prevention—meaning that only 42% use the pill exclusively for contraceptive reasons.

The study—based on U.S government data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)—revealed that after pregnancy prevention (86%), the most common reasons women use the pill include reducing cramps or menstrual pain (31%); menstrual regulation, which for some women may help prevent migraines and other painful “side effects” of menstruation (28%); treatment of acne (14%); and treatment of endometriosis (4%).

SOURCE: http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2011/11/15/index.html

The majority (86%) use it for "pregnancy prevention," 42% for only that reason. There is a multiple use argument present in these figures as well. But the beginning of this controversy and a major part of it has involved the sexual freedom of women. Just look at how many women have pointed back to the use of Viagra and insurance coverage to attempt to make their case (and in that regard they have a valid point).

You are pretending that women sexual rights have not been the major voice behind the whole push. Other reasons have been mention but it has not been front and center. I don't think that can be disputed.

Your original statement Rob was that Ms. Fluke was making it blatantly clear that Georgetown women could not afford to have sex. That was NOT ever stated in her testimony. She never even mentioned the word 'sex' although she did mention 'sexual health' twice. You took that away as meaning that all these women are going broke having sex which was not the point Ms. Fluke was making. This was- again- a problem w/ your interpretation of her statements. You're now doubling down on the comment saying that since most women use birth control primarily to prevent pregnancy that this was a valid conclusion. It was not. Your conclusion wasn't based on what she said, but based on what you heard. And that- again- is where it gets annoying. I said as much above. She never mentions the word and yet you walk away w/ a conclusion that was never even spoken by the other person.

Women take birth control for a variety of reasons, but birth control itself does not necessarily exist as a means of controlling birth. It is a means of accomplishing several ends and in the long run it's better for women's health to be able to walk away w/ the insurance coverage they're already paying for including their preventative medication.

One more thing: the fact that you draw the 'women are going broke from having sex' conclusion is also part of where you're getting flippant responses. You don't take a birth control every time you have sex, Rob. Being sexually active has little to do w/ why women start birth control or stay on birth control. Even if a woman says she's on birth control to prevent pregnancy this doesn't mean that she's in a relationship or that she's even sexually active at the time she's taking it. It takes several weeks for birth control to take effect and if you miss just one day of medication it will screw up your cycle and make your birth control ineffective. So women have to take it all the time. But even if she is sexually active she doesn't take a pill each time before having sex. She takes one a day regardless if she has sex that day 1000 times or 0 times.

It would help make things clearer for people like Rob if more media/blog sites would adopt a small yet effective thing that ThinkProgress has been doing since the contraception 'battle' started raging: many of their posts concerning the issue of contraception and the made-up controversy surrounding it are accompanied by stock photos of pill dispensers, such as this one. The sight of these complicated-looking things should (in an ideal world) disabuse anyone of the notion that women just pop a pill before having sex.

you're now doubling down on the comment saying that since most women use birth control primarily to prevent pregnancy that this was a valid conclusion.

No, I'm using statistics. She said:

40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy.

Statistically, these women should fit the somewhere close to the study results I posted. Thus of these 40% who are struggling financially because they can't afford birth control, 86% are using that birth control to prevent pregnancy, 42% for that reason alone. Just because Ms. Fluke doesn't use the word "sex" does not change this valid observation.

And, while I appreciate the picture and the instructions on how birth control pill is used, I am not ignorant to either. But if you are taking the pill for the sole purpose of preventing pregnancy, which every stat I've seen says about 40-50% use it solely for that purpose, then you are taking the pill to have sex. There's nothing wrong with that but that is the reality.

Men are taking Viagra solely for purposes of having sex. Insurance covers Viagra.

So it's important for men to have an erection paid for by insurance, but it's not important for women to have insurance cover their control over their reproductive health and futures?

What's wrong with taking a pill to have sex? Especially when there are so many other health benefits associated with hormone therapy for women.

Would you feel better about it if Viagra helped clear your complexion?

Obviously, there are underlying issues. She acts like a two year old and dates someone old enough to be her aunt.

Lots of issues.

Lmao there are underlying issues. I love this idea. So you get to call people names and then talk about how they have issues?

Me thinks Edgar doth protest too much.

Please do not feed the trolls.

J.Edgar really needs to relax. Maybe he should go shopping for handbags.

"The christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." -Nietzsche

This could also be Rush's quote: "The Limbaugh resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."

Demanding women post porn videos for him in exchange for birth control (which, evidently, we plow through like Rush eating viagra...) is just sick.

What does contraception have to do with cancer edgar? And no one was talking about free contraception. People are talking about contraception being included in their insurance policy which they have to pay for still. Seriously people?

I'll say it again: don't feed the troll. Mouzer, I like your comments but save your breath responding to deliberately inflammatory fools.

Point taken Hsun. Leveling my head as we speak ;-)

Speaking of inflammatory, there's a button for that. Let's all push J.Edgar's buttons. So to speak.

Using magical wingnut thinking the right calculated that Ms. Fluke must be having sex 7-8 times a day in order to be spending $3,000/yr on contraception. This is, of course, not even remotely close to what she said, nor indeed does it show a high amount of intelligence when it comes to the lady parts and how to manage the lady parts...but let's ignore that for right now. A woman is willing to have sex 7-8 times a day???? As a lesbian I find this offensive! I would like to be having sex 7-8 times a day! Where are these Georgetown "sluts" that Mr. Limbaugh keeps fantasizing about?? And why is it that I am not the one that's having all of the sex with them?!

Seriously even by their own logic it's f'd up and silly. And that's the part I'll never understand.

But don't forget, if you do manage to have sex 7 or 8 times a day with "sluts", you must be sure to send a video of your activities to Rush Limbaugh.

Which begs the question: raw footage, or just the edited highlights? And is a '70s-porn musical track optional or required?

Yes that's right- because apparently in wingnut land we can be angry that women are using contraception because the Bible says so, but that whole thing about it being an abomination to spill your seed or to fornicate? Pshhhh. Rush doesn't need to follow that rule.