When Rush Limbaugh made his unfortunate comments about Georgetown Law’s new “it” girl, Sandra Fluke, he may or may not have accurately described the young woman’s behavior according to the standards of a bygone era. The accuracy of his description is not at issue, so much as that Limbaugh broke a cardinal rule and went after someone in an unequal station in life.
Limbaugh, the self-styled “Doctor of Democracy,” indeed travels in the highest political circles, along with academics who seek his counsel. His commentary on Fluke was tantamount to the President or faculty of a college going on national radio and speaking in that way about a student.
It’s. Just. Not. Done.
Students are still in formation and are to be accorded a certain degree of forbearance. When Fluke holds the degree of Juris Doctor, then the gloves come off. However, students do not enjoy blanket immunity from impaling themselves on their own ill-informed or deceitful tongues, and it is the duty of faculty to correct the record when they get it wrong. This serves the interests of truth, the student, the school, and a public misled by false information made credible by the advanced academic status of the student and the stature of the school.
Having held herself out as the spokeswoman for sexually active Georgetown Law women whose extracurricular activities seem to occasion economic disenfranchisement on them, a candid analysis of Fluke’s numbers, submitted in the Congressional Record, seems to be in order.
According to Fluke, it costs a female Georgetown Law student $3,000 for contraception over the course of her three years in school. That’s $1,000 per academic year. So just how much contraception can $1,000 buy in a year?
The nearby Walmart sells generic birth control pills for $9 per month without insurance. Total cost: $108. Balance: $892
Presumably, the rest is spent on condoms to help protect against disease and add an added measure of ‘protection’ from pregnancy.
Walmart sells boxes of LifeStyles Ultra Sensitive condoms (40 per box) for $11.46. Dividing that price into $892, the cost-conscious student can purchase 77 Boxes of condoms for a grand total of 3,080 condoms!
And to think Democrat leaders hate Walmart!
Dividing 3080 condoms by 365 days in a year yields 8.43 condoms used EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. When do these women find time to study? What sort of feminism do they ascribe to where the men are not required to bear some of the cost?
Assuming that these students actually take two days off per week to study and rest, that raises the daily condom usage to 11.8 per day! Not even sailors brag like that.
Obviously math is not Ms. Fluke’s strong suit. I’m not suggesting that she’s any of the things Limbaugh called her, and I won’t repeat them here. However, when a graduate student gives testimony before the Congress of the United States of America, said student had better be deadly accurate with the facts.
The truth is either that Fluke is a bit confused with her numbers, does not know how to comparison shop, or perhaps has an agenda, or perhaps all three. There is no doubt that Georgetown University has an agenda that aligns along the same axis as HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sandra Fluke.
Given the stark reality of the Obama administration’s war on religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, the invitation of Sebelius as a commencement speaker this year can only signal that the Jesuits at Georgetown have broken ranks with the bishops in the most public, egregious, and consequential manner possible. There’s no cajoling such ideologues. They have chosen up sides in this war on religion.
It is difficult to see how any Catholic of good conscience can call Georgetown Catholic.
If Real Catholic T.V.’s Michael Voris can be instructed to no longer call his operation “Catholic,” pursuant to the discernment accorded to bishops under Canon Law, then what are the bishops to say of Georgetown?
Jesus gave us the model of fraternal correction. It is time to treat Georgetown as outsiders until such time as they return and bend to the Magisterium in matters of faith and morals. It’s not only medicinal for Georgetown and the Jesuits, but the laity and the world who see such example of disobedience and take it for acceptable difference of opinion within the faith.
The President and his allies have ushered in a new era where there are no more ambiguities, nothing left to debate. Either they will be defeated at the polls and the registrar’s office, or we will be co-opted by the state and her minions dutifully trained by the Georgetown’s of the nation.
You always get it right.
Honor God is always our first priority.
Hope GT gets a copy of this!
Wholeheartedly agree.
I sure hope GT gets a copy of this.
Press on. God honors the faithful. (Great what Franciscan Univ.announced today. NO to the HHS health plan.)
Well said, well said, well said.
No fuzzy math here! Ms. Fluke must be one busy woman! Good job, doctor.
Oh, come on, Dr. Nadal, you are a scientist. You know that “generic birth control pills” are not the same as generic acetaminophen.
Not all women can take generics: http://blogs.webmd.com/womens-health/2011/07/is-your-generic-birth-control-pill-really-the-same-as-the-brand-name-version.html
You could have made a better point by saying that $3,000 is an inflated figure, when generics are available for people who are able to take them, and when a diaphragm or IUD cost only a few hundred dollars and last for several years.
Diaphragms/IUDs are not appropriate for all women, but surely plenty of Georgetown students are using them, and inclusion of these methods certainly brings down the average costs of birth control.
So really, you’re doing the same thing that Rush is doing, just without the namecalling. You’re making fun of Ms. Fluke, implying that she’s having lots and lots of sex.
You could have questioned her math without asking, “When do these women find time to study?” and saying, “Not even sailors brag like that.”
You could have made your point about Sebelius and Georgetown without all the sexy talk, but it wouldn’t have been as funny, which I guess is why you chose to include it.
L.,
I’ve been to your blog and have seen the way you speak of me and others with whom you disagree, so you can save the lesson in polite discourse.
As for your suggestion and others that women engage in multiple layers of birth control:
Pill+IUD+Diaphragm+Condoms+Spermicide…
Why not just encase the uterus in acrylic and get it over with? When women in law school suit up for sex like it’s a medieval jousting tournament, then perhaps a little more time with torts and contracts would be more productive and less dehumanizing.
Ha, I make no claims that my own blog is polite — that has never been one of my aims! I don’t think I spoke ill of you, personally there, though.
And I wasn’t suggesting that women engage in “multiple levels” of birth control — though, as I tell my own teenagers, it’s always wise to use a condom, particularly if they’re having sex with multiple partners.
L. Making no claims at being polite is not a pass for being vile, and certainly not a license for giving lessons in codes of conduct to which you do not or cannot adhere.
From your linked source:
“There are sources on the Internet which suggest that low dose BCPs containing 20 micrograms of ethinyl estradiol might not be as effective as their brand name counterparts.”
Internet sources will tell you that pigs can really fly. I always link to primary scientific source material and not anecdotal material. Got anything more substantial?
I am indeed as vile as I want to be on my own blog, and I meant to give no lessons. I was merely calling a cheap shot when I saw it.
Birth control pills, as you well know, are not a single chemical, but rather different combinations and concentrations, which some women tolerate better than others.
HI Dr. Nadal,
some observations:
Dogma: INFALLIBLE teaching of Faith or Morals, derived from the Deposit of Faith. Propagated by ex cathedra pronouncment of reigning Pontiff or by a ecumenical council of the Church’s bishops in turn ratified by reigning Pontiff. Cannot contradict Deposit of Faith or prior Dogma.
Doctrine: NOT infallible teaching of the Church of Faith and Morals. Binding on all Catholics while propagated. Can be altered, modified, abandoned, even condemned. Doctrine RARELY becomes Dogma.
Now,
Catholic teaching on contraception and abortion has been anything but consistent. What most people–including most Catholics- think of as “the Catholic position” on these issues actually dates from the 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii of Pope Pius XI. Prior to that, church teaching was a mixed and jumbled bag. The pope decided to tidy up the tradition and change it by saying that contraception and sterilization were sins against nature and abortion was a sin against life.Both contraception and abortion were generally forbidden in previous teaching but both were often thought to be associated with sorcery and witchcraft. Pope Gregory IX in the Decretals of 1230 treated both contraception and abortion as “homicide.” Some of the Christian Penitentials of the early middle ages prescribed seven years of fasting on bread and water for a layman who commits homicide, one year for performing an abortion, but seven years for sterilization. Sterilization was considered more serious than abortion because the issue was not framed as “pro-life” but rather, the driving bias was anti-sexual. The traditional Christian attitudes toward sexuality were so negative that it was only reproductivity that could justify this activity. Abortion frustrated fertility once; sterilization could frustrate it forever and therefore it was more serious. Also, since the role of the ovum was not learned until the nineteenth century, the sperm were thought to be little homunculi, miniature people, and for this reason male masturbation was sometimes called homicide. Clearly Christian historical sexual ethics is a bit of a hodge podge. To really understand it and to arrive at an informed judgment on Catholic moral options it is necessary to be instructed by a little more history.
Okay, here is an overview of the different types:
http://www.ihs.gov/nptc/documents/NPTC%20Oral%20Contraceptive%20Review.pdf
Products differ “with respect to cycle control issues
(e.g., breakthrough bleeding and spotting), adverse effects (e.g., bloating, weight gain, androgenic effects), or safety (e.g., thromboembolic events).”
My point is only that “the pill” is not THE pill — there are many varieties, and not everyone can take the generic versions.
And from now on, I will keep away from your comment box, and write all of my responses to your thoughts on my own “vile” blog. Over there, I can be profane and obscene to my vile heart’s content, without offending anyone’s sensibilities. Bye!
Maaka,
You take Church history and overlay it with your own subjective attribution of motive, which comports with a feminist paradigm. The teaching of the Church has always been consistent in its condemnation of birth control, sterilization and abortion. It’s not a hodge podge as you say. Paul VI crystallized it and gave the underlying moral principle, which is different from the tidying up approach.