http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=BDE873B8-53BC-4CF8-8D35-93BD4D9C798ERush blasted for 'slut' comment
By: MJ Lee
March 1, 2012 06:46 AM EST
Rush Limbaugh is under fire for calling a Georgetown University law student who testified on Capitol Hill about contraception a “prostitute” and a “slut.”
“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?” Limbaugh said on his radio show on Wednesday. “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.”
The conservative radio host continued on to joke, “OK, so she’s not a slut. She’s ‘round heeled.’”
Fluke, a third-year student at Georgetown University Law Center, was a witness last week at an unofficial hearing of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee , convened by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), as a response to an earlier all-male panel hearing held by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), had not allowed Fluke to testify at the original hearing, saying she was not qualified to do so.
Fluke explained at the hearing that as a student at a Jesuit campus that does not provide contraception, birth control costs can be as high as $3,000 during the time that she is in law school. She expressed opposition to a bill sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would allow employers to avoid providing contraception for religious reasons.
“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 aren’t, a woman’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body,” Fluke had said.
On his show Wednesday, Limbaugh suggested that the reason Fluke cannot afford birth control methods is because she is having too much sex.
“Can you imagine if you’re her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be? 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,” he said, according to a transcript of his show.
“Well, I guess now we know why Bill Clinton went to Georgetown and why Hillary went to Wellesley,” he continued. “All the sex going on at Georgetown. Sandra Fluke. So much sex going on, they can’t afford birth control pills.”
Pelosi, along with a half-dozen other members of Congress, blasted the “vicious attacks” made against Fluke on Wednesday.
“She courageously spoke truth to power. As a result, today, she has been subject to attacks that are outside the circle of civilized discussion and that unmask the strong disrespect for women held by some in this country,” read a joint statement by the lawmakers that did not identify Limbaugh by name. “We call upon the Republican leaders in the House to condemn these vicious attacks on Ms. Fluke … Democrats will always stand up for women’s health and women’s voices.”
In an email to supporters, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also blasted Limbaugh.
“Standing up for women’s health care does not make you a ‘slut’ or a ‘prostitute,’” the DCCC email read. “Rush and the right-wing Republicans in Congress who promote their radical War on Women must be held accountable for this.”
The Senate is set to vote on the Blunt amendment on Thursday. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who spoke out against the provision on the Senate floor prior to the vote, also joined the chorus of condemnation against Limbaugh.
“There is no call for those kinds of comments. Those are very inappropriate and they should be repudiated by lots of people,” she said on MSNBC. “Let’s not go backwards here. Let’s go forwards. And yes, we are going to have to have our voices loudly heard if we are going to make this case because we are just wasting time by debating it over and over and over again.”
