Skip to content
Deacon Keith Fournier Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you. Help Now >

Women Star in the President's Political Theater: Who's Really Getting Played?

Free World Class Education
FREE Catholic Classes
C'mon ladies, wake up and stop being used and played for political points. This contraception theater show is insulting and women deserve better.

With a pen stroke and a press conference, President Obama used women to initiate a war on Religious freedom and with the media lapdogs panting at his heels, he made sure the Republicans, and especially the Catholic Church, were painted as misogynist zealots.  Now he's leading this contrived and fraudulent battle over "women's health", and the so-called feminists have pinned women's entire well-being to a package of pills and reduced women to just vaginas and uteruses. To insist that government or our employers must subsidize our sexual behavior makes us the most selfish, lazy, immature, and embarrassing society America has ever seen.

Light Your Free Payer Candle for a departed loved one

What is Palm Sunday?

Live on March 20, 2024 @ 10am PDT

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - After Sandra Fluke's testimony before Congress last week, two things became clear:  1) This controversy is political theater if I ever saw it, and 2) modern, secular "feminism" makes women stupid.

With a pen stroke and a press conference, President Obama used women to initiate a war on Religious freedom and with the media lapdogs panting at his heels, he made sure the Republicans, and especially the Catholic Church, were painted as misogynist zealots. 

Ms. Fluke has become the latest player in a drama that President Obama has manufactured and fueled for his own political gain.  Fluke, the Georgetown law student who's actually an activist for Reproductive Justice, joined Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, Barbara Boxer, Cecile Richards (Planned Parenthood), Nancy Keenan (NARAL), and scores of other Congressional leaders and political activists who are bemoaning the trials of life without free birth control pills.  With the President leading this contrived and fraudulent battle over "women's health", these so-called "feminists" have pinned women's entire well-being to a package of pills and reduced women to just vaginas and uteruses. 

Fluke, who was portrayed as a 23 year-old co-ed, is actually 30 years old and by her own admission chose to attend Georgetown precisely so she could battle their insurance policy since it does not cover contraceptives.  What a handy witness she turned out to be last week on behalf of Obama's contraception mandate. So important was she to Obama's theater show that he personally called her to apologize for things Rush Limbaugh said on his program concerning her testimony.

Fluke testified that she and her classmates have to spend $3,000 during their time at Georgetown on contraception, and it's simply an unbearable financial burden for them.  If they paid top-dollar for birth control pills, that would be about $600 a year; $1,800 for three years.  A box of condoms ranges from about $4.00 to $15.00.  That's maybe another $100 a year, but still nowhere close to $3,000.

To put this in perspective, I can sponsor two children through World Vision for less than $100 a month.  That money actually helps feed, clothe and educate a child, and improve the lot of her community as well.  So you can feed, clothe and shelter a child in a poverty-stricken country, or you can subsidize an Ivy-league college student's sex life by buying her birth control.

To give you another perspective, consider what's happening to active-duty military families and veteran retirees. Active-duty families will soon see their prescription costs increase while their access to civilian pharmacies shrinks.  Military retirees are going to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket very soon, as Obamacare tries to force them off Tricare and onto one of the government exchange programs instead.

So while active-duty military families are paying more for all their prescriptions -- medicines needed for actual illnesses -- Ivy-league college co-eds simply MUST be provided with free birth control. 

Meanwhile, unionized civilians health care benefits will be untouched.  No additional costs for them, no sir. Protect union workers; ask military families to sacrifice even more.  From whom much is already asked, even more will be required.  Is this the new American way?

What Fluke and her peers need is not a legal education but a common sense, moral education.  In about 30 minutes, they could all be taught how to manage their fertility without drugs, and their "birth control" would cost them absolutely nothing but self-control and mature decision-making.  It's called personal responsibility.  And you know what?  It's very empowering!

In the real world, when you don't have the money to pay for something you want, you do without it.  Contraception is not food and water.  It's not electricity and shelter.  It's not a need at all.  If Fluke wants birth control pills, fine, she can have them.  She can also pay for them herself.  No one is obligated to provide them for her.

This is the epitome of the entitlement society and mentality that we now live in.  To insist that government or our employers must subsidize our sexual habits and behavior makes us officially the most selfish, lazy, immature, and embarrassing society America has ever seen.

Not to mention the most hypocritical.  We demand the government stay out of our bedrooms while also demanding the government pay for our contraception.  These modern "feminists" like Fluke will shout, "My body, my choice" and "stay out of my uterus" and most of all, "the Church has no right to tell me what to do with my body!"  But now she is demanding that same government, that same Church must relieve her of the cost and responsibility for her own personal choices and bear the burden themselves.

Is this really the future of young American women?  Do they really not have the brains to figure out that if they don't have promiscuous, premarital sex, they don't need to worry about paying for contraceptives?  As an added bonus, they also won't have to worry about STD's and unwanted pregnancy.  Why is that simple concept so hard to grasp?

It's infuriating to me as a woman that this entire controversy is being played as a "war on women" and that this asinine contraceptive mandate is for the sake of "women's health."  Artificial hormones bring with them serious risks for women and pose a real danger to women's health.  Pumping a woman's -- worse, a young girl's still-growing body -- full of these artificial hormones should not be anyone's idea of the right way to take care of a woman's health.

Fertility is not a disease.  How insulting to suggest that women require artificial hormones, contraceptive devices, and abortion in order to be happy, healthy, and prosperous. 

The language of this mandate and the rhetoric being used to defend it is insidious. Preventing pregnancy is equated with women's health.  Preventing children is equated with women's well-being.  Pregnancy = unhealthy and expensive.  No pregnancy = healthy and cost-saving.  Children have become the enemy.  Children are now threatening, ominous dollar signs that we must strategically avoid. 

This is really a mandate against life.  What begins with pills in order to prevent pregnancy and save money will eventually become mandated abortions to eliminate children, especially disabled, "imperfect", medically expensive ones.  America is not immune to this progression.  We're submitting to it right now, and modern, secular "feminists" are leading the way. 

The "feminists" swear that this is all about protecting women and their choices, blah blah blah.  Baloney.  The irony is this mandate only further puts the responsibility of pregnancy and children totally on women, leaving men with nothing to do but use women for their sexual gratification and then walk away. Train the guys well to make sure their girlfriend is on the Pill so he can get what he wants, and then when the contraceptives fail, she can walk into Planned Parenthood where they've been waiting for her and she can get "her problem" taken care of.  Teach those young boys now that girls are just vaginas with a pretty face.

Greater access to contraceptives does not prevent unplanned pregnancy.   Just the opposite.  If people think they can have worry-free, consequence-free sex, they have more sex more often with more partners.  And since contraception fails, more pregnancies result.

Face it; Cecile Richards doesn't love this mandate because she wants to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies.  She doesn't want to put herself out of business.  She loves this mandate because she knows that it will bring her more business.  More promiscuous sexual activity means more STD's and more pregnancies.  And those "unwanted" babies will need to be gotten rid of for the sake of the woman's future, so Cecile and company will be there holding the doors open to their abortion mills, happily counting their cash.

President Obama has created this contraception brouhaha for the express purpose of getting women in a tizzy before November.  He plans to stoke the fire even further at Barnard College in New York, where he just made himself the commencement speaker. 

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

"Word of Mr. Obama's appearance at Barnard, a 123-year-old women's college in New York City, comes as the White House and Democrats have seized on Republican attempts to block a requirement for contraception coverage in the new health care law, saying it amounts to a "war on women."  Democrats believe the issue could be an effective rallying point with women voters in a presidential election year, and the decision to appear at the prestigious women's school could provide a high-profile forum for the president on that front."

He called and invited himself, displacing Jill Abramson from the NY Times, who was already scheduled to give the commencement speech.

Whatever else he talks about in his speech, it ought to be alarmingly clear that this President is not interested in freedom.  Barack Obama doesn't want to be the leader of a free republic.  He wants to be King.  He wants to be the Sovereign.  He doesn't govern or lead -- he simply issues mandates from on-high.  So what if our Constitution guarantees the Freedom of Religion?  He's been telling us for years now that it's really just the "Freedom of worship", and if it gets in the way of his dictatorial edicts, well, then to hell with it.

C'mon ladies, wake up and stop being used and played for political points.  This contraception theater show is insulting and women deserve better.

-----

Jennifer Hartline is a grateful Catholic, a proud Army wife and homeschooling mother of three children.  She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.  She doesn't need any contraception, thank you.  Visit her online at Wake Up, Deborah!

---


'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'


Copyright 2021 - Distributed by Catholic Online

Join the Movement
When you sign up below, you don't just join an email list - you're joining an entire movement for Free world class Catholic education.

Lent logo
Saint of the Day logo
Deacon Keith Fournier Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you. Help Now >

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

Catholic Online Logo

Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. All materials contained on this site, whether written, audible or visual are the exclusive property of Catholic Online and are protected under U.S. and International copyright laws, © Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. Any unauthorized use, without prior written consent of Catholic Online is strictly forbidden and prohibited.

Catholic Online is a Project of Your Catholic Voice Foundation, a Not-for-Profit Corporation. Your Catholic Voice Foundation has been granted a recognition of tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Federal Tax Identification Number: 81-0596847. Your gift is tax-deductible as allowed by law.