Sandra Fluke and public obligations

View 715 Saturday, March 03, 2012

When I was a lad, women and girls did not openly discuss their sex life, and those who attended Catholic institutions were expected to at least pretend that they believed chastity was a virtue. There was then, as there is now, opposition from within the Catholic church from those who believe the Catholic doctrine on contraception to be an error, but it was not often a matter of public discussion.

Sandra Fluke, a thirty year old women’s rights advocate and third year law student at Jesuit run Georgetown University, has a different view. She insisted on testifying at a House of Representatives hearing on the Obamacare mandate requiring all businesses to provide employee health care, and mandating what should be covered in that government mandated health care package: she wanted to talk about the mandate to provide free contraception prescriptions for everyone covered by these mandated health insurance packages. Georgetown, like all Catholic institutions, does not provide abortion as part of its health insurance package, and she wanted to speak for the Georgetown women who would now be desolated because they don’t now get free contraception. When the Congressional committee that was hearing the matter failed to call her to testify she complained bitterly, and was invited by minority Member Nancy Pelosi to be interviewed and state her case.

Before Pelosi’s intervention but after Chairman Darrell Issa (Rep,. CA) declined to invite her to testify, she gave interviews.

Fluke came to Georgetown University interested in contraceptive coverage: She researched the Jesuit college’s health plans for students before enrolling, and found that birth control was not included. “I decided I was absolutely not willing to compromise the quality of my education in exchange for my health care,” says Fluke, who has spent the past three years lobbying the administration to change its policy on the issue. The issue got the university president’s office last spring, where Georgetown declined to change its policy.

Fluke says she would have used the hearing to talk about the students at Georgetown that don’t have birth control covered, and what that’s meant for them. “I wanted to be able to share their stories,” she says. “My testimony would have been about women who have been affected by their policy, who have medical needs and have suffered dire consequences.. . .The committee did not get to hear real stories I had to share, about actual women who have been dramatically affected by this policy.” [Original source Washington Post, reprinted here.]

This caused a publicity flareup. Rush Limbaugh got involved, and pretty soon the news was about Sandra Fluke and not about the issue of publicly paid for contraception.

Fluke is essentially saying that it is her right to have free contraception, and it is the government’s responsibility to pay for it, and the Obama administration is saying that is correct, and this is something that must be covered by health insurance for everyone.

This seems odd. If getting pregnant is a danger to be avoided, humanity has known since at least the Bronze Age that there is a simple way to avoid pregnancy: virginity, or, since that word may have alternate definitions, more technically, females may avoid becoming pregnant by not having sexual intercourse with males. This is a well known sure fire method that has always worked.

Moreover, being a student at Georgetown, Sandra should have been made aware of the standard Catholic advice to young women: avoid the occasion of sin. This has been the standard Catholic lesson from about third grade on to maturity for centuries. If you don’t want to get pregnant, be careful about where you go and who you go there with. I’m sure there are still some among the Georgetown faculty who remember it.

But, Sandra would insist, that’s the kind of old fashioned gup that I am protesting. Keep your rosary off of my ovary. Or something like that. I recall protestors chanting that some years ago, I think in reaction to laws that made it difficult to obtain contraceptive pills and devices. In my day at least it was a lot easier if a bit embarrassing for young men to obtain condoms than for girls to obtain whatever contraceptive medicines and devices they trusted once they had decided to forgo virginity. But over time those restrictions and even social conventions were cast away, and while there may be some legal obstacles to young women obtaining birth control pills without the consent of their parents, the obstacles can be overcome with relative ease. Certainly by the time a young woman reaches law school she will know, or can easily find out, how to obtain contraceptives. There will be no legal barriers.

But what if she can’t afford them?

Common sense would say that the simplest solution to that problem is technical virginity.

Sandra Fluke’s solution is to demand that taxpayers pay for her contraceptive pills and devices. She can’t afford to have sex because of the risk of pregnancy, and it is up to us to provide her with the wherewithal for contraception. She hasn’t spoken about protection from STD’s but I think it safe to assume she believes we ought to pay for her insurance for treatment of those when they fail. Of course there are contraception means that are also somewhat effective against STD’s, and they are considerably cheaper than the ones Sandra Fluke demands; but apparently the choice of what we pay for is not up to us. Sandra Fluke has a right to indulge in sex when and however she wants, and to the means of contraception that she wants, and it is up to the taxpayers to pay for it.

The real question here is simple: how do you acquire the obligation to pay for Sandra Fluke’s birth control devices and pills? But in the great flap over her virtue that question seems to have been lost.

We need to go back to it. Even if insuring Sandra Fluke’s health is an obligation that the rest of us must assume, when did contraception pills become health insurance? What illness are we preventing? Must we then insure her against being eaten by sharks when she insists on swimming in shark infested waters? Can her life insurance include provisions that she will not be covered if she goes hiking on the Iranian border? Must we pay for any activity that might result in death, dismemberment, pregnancy, etc.?

Leave alone the freedom of religion issue of requiring a Jesuit college to provide contraception. Where did the government get the right to require that we the people pay for anyone’s contraception? How did we acquire that obligation and can we not find some way to be shut of it?