(Fred Weinberg/The Penny Press) – The other day, a young Georgetown University law student named Sandra Fluke said, in front of a Democratic Congressional panel, “I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraception coverage in its student health plan. Just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously affiliated hospitals and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.”
Let me get this straight.
This woman, who voluntarily chose to go to a Catholic institution and pay tuition of $23,432.50, A SEMESTER so she can go out and become a highly paid lawyer fully knowing that the Catholic Church’s doctrine forbids artificial birth control is mad because the University doesn’t want to pay for health insurance which provides benefits which violate its owner’s teachings.
Needless to say, several conservative commentators, including Rush Limbaugh, took her to task. Granted, Limbaugh’s rhetoric, calling her a “slut” was way over the top, but that doesn’t change the basic facts.
And, apparently fearing that this poor, misguided student at a Jesuit institution would be crushed, the President called her up to encourage her.
Let me ask a rhetorical question.
Does anybody force someone to either work for a religious institution or attend a religious educational institution?
I think not.
In point of fact, Ms. Fluke articulates her reasoning for attending Georgtown Law in her testimony. “We refuse to pick between a quality education and our health.”
Apparently Michigan, Harvard, Yale and Illinois don’t provide enough of a quality education as well as free birth control pills which she says are necessary for her health. The Catholic Church, which created that institution of high quality education, be damned, Ms. Fluke is going to create her own rules. Just like Barack Hussein Obama.
Let me ask another question.
Does working for or attending such an institution mean you cannot get birth control pills?
Of course not.
This isn’t about free choice. It’s about who pays for that free choice.
Nobody is telling Ms. Fluke, or her patron saint Nancy Pelosi, that she can’t use those pills or that she can’t get them. Just that she will have to pay for them herself. JUST LIKE SHE PAYS $23,432.50 A SEMESTER.
Actually, somebody else pays for this ingrate since she’s there on a scholarship by her own admission. Perhaps she should demand her scholarship provider pay. It makes more sense since they chose to put her through law school on their own volition—assuming, of course that her scholarship isn’t provided by or through the University itself in which case such a demand would be off the charts in its arrogance. As opposed to her current demand which merely rises to the top of the chart.
I’m sure Ms. Fluke is a very nice person. She might even become a very good lawyer since a good lawyer needs a big dose of chutzpah and she’s got a truckload of that.
But if she doesn’t want to abide by the wishes of the Church which built that fine University as to who will pay for something the Church teaches against, than she should have gone to Harvard.