Clutch: Rush Limbaugh Is Sorry For Mocking Your Birth Control
Monday, March 5, 2012 at 11:37AM
In today's post for Clutch Magazine, The Snob writes about how birth control wandered in the national debate. Not abortion, but BIRTH CONTROL. The pill. The thing women take for everything from pregnancy prevention to period regulation to controling ovarian cysts and hormones. Yes. That thing. It's a thing right now. For crazy people. Take a gander.
From Clutch:
Why is birth control, something that we all thought was settled as a part of life post the sexual revolution of the 1960s, rather commonplace by the 1970s, and something I took as a 15-year-old virgin to regulate my horrible, no good, very bad menstrual cycle (you don’t want to know) CONTROVERSIAL?
I get why various forms of birth control and family planning were controversial in my grandmother’s day, back when getting your tubes tied was called “butchering”…but today? Now? And why?
Well, there’s an election, that’s why.
(...)
But before we laugh off what we think is ludicrous, we have to remember – these people running on the anti-birth control mantra have some power. They are former members of Congress. Captains of media. Titans of industry. Wealthy donors and influential religious figures alike. It’s not some slack jawed yokel. It’s the moneyed invisible hand animating that slack jawed yokel puppet, lulling you into a false sense of reproductive rights security. They say it’s about abortion, but it’s really about you having control over what goes on down there between the knees and how you shouldn’t have any more control than your father/boyfriend/husband/pastor will give you. Who cares what you think, believe or who you pray to believes. There’s an election to be won, and even though women are over half of the population of the United States, the GOP is talking about lady people as if they are a niche. As if they don’t vote.
Reader Comments (14)
Rush is only sorry that he finally said something that has cost him MONEY$$. Otherwise there would be no apology. He has gotten to the point that he thinks he can say anything. There was no backlash from the right so we can assume they agree. GET RUSH OFF THE AIR!!!
The anti-woman forces were just using abortion as a stalking horse. They got impatient and decided to go for the Hail-Mary-pass. So they finally ripped the face masks off, and we can see what was there all along--men in black skirts.
We know that Rush isn't sorry, and normally his inflammatory language and comments are totally given a free pass.
Color me surprised that he was only punished when he insulted a white woman.
He has done racist Asian accent, racist Black accents, and many other things and never lost any sponsors over it.
I mean, great this hurts his bottom line but it's also another reminder of the hierarchy in terms of who people like him can safely hurt and who they cannot.
Rush Limbaugh, stay out of my vagina, you fat ugly sweaty pig of a man!
@Nic:
Limbaugh didn't just insult a white woman. He effectively insulted ALL women, by implying that using birth control makes you a whore. Women, whatever their color, apparently aren't supposed to have sex lives, except for babymaking. Simple math should have led him to understand that this was not a good plan.
Insulting Asians means going after 4% of the population.
Insulting Blacks means going after 12% of the population.
Insulting women means going after 51% of the population. Uh-oh ...
@Smartacus, Rush Limbaugh has been insulting Asians and Blacks and a lot of other people for a while. So in the case of Asians, we're talking about 30% of the world's population. Insulting people of African descent means going after 15% o the WORLD'S population...like I said, it only seems to matter to you and a lot of other people when he insulted a white, most likely Christian, privileged woman...and while there is a lot of overlap with the two groups I mentioned, when he insults Muslims, he is insulting 23% of the WORLD's population.
Uh oh right back at you...
I believe Mr. Limpball’s main concern is that through government funding, the tax payers, without vote or consent are paying the price for the contraceptives. This may be a true concern for others. There are several people who are totally for a woman’s right to choose, but not on the government’s dollar. Had he spoken plainly about his concern, he may have been able to truly have a positive discussion about how the nation can ensure women have options without purchasing the contraceptives using public funding.
Listen, Rush Limpballs is an on-air agitator. He is paid to disrupt the airwaves with his message in order for advertisers to get through. That is what he does. What I can’t understand is why no one has questioned Rush’s use of contraceptives with his wife? He doesn’t have a tribe of children running around, so wouldn’t it be safe to ask, “How do you keep from having children?” Since he is so caught up in the bedrooms, backrooms, and boardrooms of everyone’s sexual activity, shouldn’t he too receive the same line of questioning? “Does your wife use contraception, or is that your responsibility?” If he responded that his wife used contraception, wouldn't that make her the poster girl for his description?
Justice
@Nic:
I agree with you that people should absolutely care about what happens to others outside their own narrow demographic. People shouldn't only care when it's their group that gets attacked, then ignore what happens to others. However, in the real world, not enough people do take that position. Or at least aren't motivated to act on it.
As to what Asians in Asia think, or what non-American blacks think, I don't see how their opinions would EVER have any impact on someone like Limbaugh. They have very little influence on either American politics or Limbaugh's sponsorship/viewship, so he can safely insult foreigners all he likes, without any repercussions to his bank account.
"Rush Limbaugh Is Sorry For Mocking Your Birth Control"
He wasn't mocking your birth control. He was mocking a 30 year old demanding taxpayers to pay for birth control..
asians in asia, africans in africa, and muslims in the middle east probably don't give two hoots about rush limbaugh. and probably couldn't point him out at a jenny craig seminar. squeaky wheel gets the oil. women as a whole are A LOT bigger of a squeaky wheel than racial, ethnic, or even religious "minorities." why, because there's more of them.
that said, other than for medical purposes and to prevent extreme pain, why should birth control be covered by insurance? condoms aren't. all women don't suffer from those circumstances, though i don't know the percentage of women who do. and i don't think things like viagra should be covered by insurance, either.
@ swiv
Well, there are several differences between birth control and condoms (and Viagra for that matter), since birth control has huge, societal implications. Viagra helps cure impotence. Birth control keeps our society and already broken healthcare system from being over run with unwanted children that we, the taxpayers end up paying for the care of.
But here are the main reasons why it's covered:
1) You need a prescription from a doctor. You cannot purchase it over the counter.
2) It's demonstrably more expensive than condoms.
3) The health care implications of a woman being pregnant (especially if its an unwanted pregnancy) is far more expensive for an insurance company, the woman and the dude who got her pregnant.
4) Birth control is something a woman can do to prevent pregnancy without relying on the guy to have condoms, be willing to wear them and also use them properly. Or, using the old "pull n' pray" method. Many women don't always feel comfortable relying on or talking to their partners about pregnancy protection. And we all know there are certain guys out there who honestly don't care about the implications of unprotected sex and see that as the woman's responsibility.
5) Although condoms have been around since forever, pre-birth control it wasn't unheard of for many women, typically poor and working class women to have multiple children with their husbands or partners. In my family's case, many of my older relatives had nine children or more. Most people aren't the Duggars. The more kids you have, the more financial responsibilities you tend to take on.
6) Without birth control and proper family planning the state would end up taking care of those children. The state is you, the taxpayer.
7) Women are more than half of the United States population and family planning is a major part of any adult woman's health.
So ... I mean, as far as I'm concerned, based on those reasons alone, I'd actually be for the government using tax dollars to subsidize birth control to bring down the cost and hand the shit out on street corners along with free condoms and sex education. Because the reason why a lot of poor women have so many kids is because they don't have health insurance that covers birth control or access to clinics that offer it at reduced rates or for free. Birth control was always a game changer because it finally gave women control over when they could have kids and that meant a lot of women could wait until they were financially able to.
The only other option is to tell men and women to stop having sex with each other and Lordy, they ain't doing that. Even married people like to do it with each other without fear of adding an unwanted pregnancy to the family. I don't know a lot of married folks who would be "down" for abstaining from sex in their own marriage to prevent pregnancy. And while for some married people condoms are a preferred use of BC, for most people the main perk of being in a monogamous relationship is you don't have to pull out a roll of condoms to do it to your old lady.
@danielle
I agree with you about the public policy benefits/justifications of birth control. There are just so many costs to society associated with unwanted children that it's really hard to see why we wouldn't rationally go out of our way to do whatever necessary to prevent them. These range from increases in education and public assistance spending to, more controversially, the costs of crime and law enforcement. It's hard to prove, but there's a lot of reason to believe that unwanted kids may be more likely to end up in economic situations that predispose them to get involved in crime.
Additionally, there's no evidence proving that including contraception will make insurance policies cost more -- hell, a delivery resulting from just one unwanted pregnancy will cost more to the insurance carrier than providing contraception for a year to, like, 25 women! It's really unclear that this policy will cause anyone to pay anything more than they already would have, whether it's taxpayers or private employers.
And in any case, medical insurance provided by employers is PAY. Why should any employer, including a religious one, feel he has a right to tell employees how they may spend their pay? As an analogy, it's like having a Jewish or Muslim boss who insists he has a right to insist your salary not be used to buy pork products, and if you object, threatens to come to your house to slap the bacon off your plate.
If such a boss were forbidden to do this, does he have a right to be outraged? No.
I think this is one issue where the reaction from conservatives is due to a) knee-jerk opposition to having to pay for something, despite the fact that doing so will likely reduce tax burden in the long run, and b) there are a small number of religious extremists driving the conservative bus, and for them, the economics don't matter.
I love Danielle's "slap the bacon off your plate".
The real reason they are against universal health care AND birth conrtol is for the same reason--both are contrary to cheap labor.
This is only a tiny bit off topic, but since this started with Catholic institutions not wanting BC coverage included in their health plans, anyone know if Physicians who practice at Catholic health care facilities are prohibited from RX'ing BC?
Just curious how the answer might expand discussions/debate on the topic as a whole. Prohibiting or not, either position sure sounds like a loose-loose for Catholic health care institutions.