RE: Students Reflect On Women’s Reproductive Rights

Sandra Fluke, a third-year-law student at Georgetown University, wishes to have contraceptives provided by her University Health Plan, since, like most young college females, she has difficulty paying for them herself. She has been one of the only women to speak her mind on this issue in front of Congress. It is upsetting when she is viciously attacked by people such as Rush Limbaugh who publicly called her a “slut” and “prostitute,” also saying, “They are having so much sex they’re going broke.” Sandra Fluke is just representing the millions of women who stand behind her, but are too afraid to speak up, in fear of being attacked by people like Limbaugh.

In the First Amendment, there is a clear separation of church and state. In other words, religion should not interfere with government, yet it almost always does. Obama’s mandate will require all business, religiously affiliated or not, to provide contraceptives to women who request it. In a country where millions of women are on the pill (1.5 million alone use it for non-contraceptive reasons). This should not be a political argument, which it has turned out to be.

Women’s health has been treated like a political game. What is worse is that, in the end, men make the final decision. What a woman wishes to do with her body is up to her; no one, especially not a man, should tell her what she can and cannot do. Many people argue that it would be morally wrong for businesses to have to pay for these contraceptives. In fact, it is morally wrong for women to have to stand aside as men make the final decision about a woman’s body.