HORRIBLE COMMENTS ABOUT SANDRA FLUKE

Sandra Fluke is a 31 year-old, Georgetown Law school graduate and women's rights activist whose name entered the public discourse in a major way in February of this year when she testified before congress on the importance of including birth control in health insurance. There were notably few women given a voice in this hearing that consisted largely of old white men sitting around deciding the future of millions of women's bodies.

The optics were terrible.

This went down in the heat of the already furnace-like birth control debate started in 2011 with the swearing in of an army of conservatives from the 2010 elections. As I've mentioned previously, anti-abortion (and anti-birth control in general) has been the GOP's most consistent legislative goal ever since.

Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh threw fuel on the fire, as it is his idiom to stretch his 1st amendment right beyond all taste:

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.

He goes on to say that Fluke must not be able to afford birth control pills because she's having so much sex, displaying less than the most basic understanding of how birth control pills work.

Fluke gave an incendiary speech at the (so far, expertly crafted) Democratic National Convention yesterday, prompting fresh conservative outrage.

Perhaps, as the year is rapidly approaching 2013, you suspect that Limbaugh's comments are some sort of anomaly, that nobody is really this misogynistic anymore? Here are some of the comments from just one Newser article on the subject of Fluke's speech:

So did this dumb bitch say anything substantial.  waaah ultrasounds is about the only real quote i see.  not too many care about the oops i whored out accidentally got pregnant and need to kill the baby asap vote. - DIAPERCAKE

 A shitbag like this is the best the dems can do at their national convention?  No wonder the country is going to throw their asses out in November! - jriven00

 what an insufferable little brat she is !  her being bumped to prime time would have been a true disaster for the dems if clinton had not ended up stealing the show tonight.  seems like there's an easy joke about clinton and fluke's contraceptives here but i refuse to go there. - el_polacko