The Friday Letter / Issue No. 167

The left’s rising star is no fluke

Stephen Combs / The Federalist Review

Federalist New World Dictionary. Fluke (2012): 1. Presentation of an absurd idea in total seriousness but received as a joke. 2. Free birth control guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution

Three cheers for Sandra Fluke, whose contribution this week to the pop lexicon is destined to make her as famous, and probably as ridiculed, as Monica Lewinsky. First we had the Lewinsky. Now we have the Fluke, and this is no fluke.
Sandra Fluke is a law student at Georgetown University with either an insatiable sexual appetite or acquaintances with such. At a Congressional Democrat-only show hearing Monday staged by Nancy Pelosi, Sandra moaned (sorry for the word choice) that Georgetown women can’t afford birth control because the stingy Jesuit university won’t let them have it free.
In the clichéd phrasing worthy of a freshman speechwriting class, she let it be known that “When I look around my campus I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage.” Can’t you just visualize her looking around at all these forlorn sexually-deprived faces?
While she spoke, an unidentified young woman who could have played the fat chick in Porky sat mesmerized at her feet in fawning adoration, hanging in awe on every word. It’s unclear her concern about birth control, to be honest. Perhaps she’s adept with the delivery end of a Lewinsky, but that does not cause pregnancy.
The problem seems to be getting worse. “Especially in the last week I have heard more and more of their stories,” Sandra told the outraged Democrats. “On a daily basis I hear from yet another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously-affiliated employer and they tell me they have suffered financially, emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage.”
Jeepers creepers!
Was this a joke? A 20-something named Fluke lecturing on medicine and describing contraception as medical treatment that taxpayers and the Catholic Church should pay for? Is this a rising-star comedienne among us?
“When you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not,” she instructed, “a woman’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.”
That back seat, arena of many a first sexual experience?

The radio airwaves this week were filled with jokes about Sandra’s claim that contraception costs $3,000 for three years of law school. With the cost of a condom about a dollar – available wherever fine products are sold – Sandra would need to stay pretty active to consume that kind of money. By our calculations, with 365.25 days in a year, she would need to be testing the Big Bang Theory just about 2.7378509787132103004 times a day (rounded).
To which Rush Limbaugh wisecracked, it’s no wonder Bill Clinton went to Georgetown.

Here is the problem. The argument cannot proceed on a logical course when the participants do not even understand the concept of insurance. Insurance is supposed to be protection against perils — unexpected loss spread over the small contributions of many. Insurance was not intended for predictable, normal expenses, or even damage caused by erosion or termites. But that is what it has become in healthcare. This phenomenon is a contributor to the ever-rising cost of medicine.
Worse, to whole generations of Americans, coverage of routine medical expenses has become an entitlement that will be difficult to reverse under the best of political circumstances. Take the dog’s bone, and you are looking for a fight.
And that explains why Sandra Fluke considers her responsibility to pay for her own birth control is “an untenable burden.” It’s the responsibility of taxpayers to provide this, not hers.

With all the controversy, we are surprised that nobody on Nancy Pelosi’s committee remembered to ask the most fundamental question of all: Why does the country need more women lawyers?
→ See Sandra’s performance at cnsnews.com