Pro-abortion, anti-liberty zealot Rep. Nancy Pelosi has inadvertently done the pro-life cause a favor. On Monday the House Minority Leader held a congressional hearing on the cost of birth control, and the testimony of her witness, Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, put the narcissism and disingenuousness of her cause on full display:
Without insurance coverage, contraception 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. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy. One told us of how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that contraception wasn’t covered, and had to walk away because she couldn’t afford it. Students like her have no choice but to go without contraception.
Craig Bannister at CNSNews.com did the math and found that “At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms – or, 1,000 a year.” Divide 1,000 by 365, and it seems Ms. Fluke wants us to believe Georgetown girls are “having sex 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years.” Considering that my friends and I (male and female alike) managed to survive four years of college without having any sex, I don’t think the Georgetown kids cutting down a little is too much to ask.
Further, the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack notes:
Birth control pills can be purchased for as low as $9 per month at a pharmacy near Georgetown’s campus. According to an employee at the pharmacy in Washington, D.C.’s Target store, the pharmacy sells birth control pills–the generic versions of Ortho Tri-Cyclen and Ortho-Cyclen–for $9 per month. “That’s the price without insurance,” the Target employee said. Nine dollars is less than the price of two beers at a Georgetown bar.
$9 x 12 months = a mere $108 per year. Ms. Fluke’s recreational preference is more than affordable, and let’s be clear that that’s exactly what it is—her personal choice to prioritize something that she probably (I can’t find confirmation whether or not she’s married) shouldn’t even be doing in the first place, according not to me or Congress but according to her own belief system and the values of the college she voluntarily attends. (Oh, and since she’s a recipient of Georgetown’s Public Interest Law Scholarship, Georgetown might already be paying for up to a third of her annual tuition, in addition to that summer stipend.)
But wait, Sandra Fluke counters, this isn’t just about sex—lots of women need contraception pills for other medical reasons. Georgetown technically covers such prescriptions, but:
In sixty-five percent of cases, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they need these prescriptions and whether they’re lying about their symptoms.
Yes, how dare Georgetown attempt to verify the legitimacy of requests for a service that could so easily be used for entirely different purposes!
For my friend, and 20% of 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 the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy.
Assuming she’s telling the truth, Georgetown may very well be in the wrong. Perhaps the school should show greater deference to “women and their doctors” rather than “university administrators or other employers.” But that’s neither a justification to get the federal government involved nor to forcibly change Georgetown’s policy on birth control for casual use. Her quarrel is with Georgetown University, not Congress.
If Sandra Fluke’s numbers are accurate, that wouldn’t indicate contraception is a necessity. Quite the opposite—it would suggest that Georgetown University has been consumed by a sex-obsessed culture that doesn’t even try to subordinate personal gratification to higher virtues like self-control, chastity, or personal responsibility. Nancy Pelosi’s star witness has unwittingly illustrated one of the stakes in the ObamaCare contraception battle that’s been lost amidst the talk of religious liberty and government power: the moral caliber of the young people we’re relying on to become the responsible adults of the next generation.
