AHA
AHA’s Nice List: Sandra Fluke
By now, everyone should know Sandra Fluke’s name. She’s a third-year Georgetown Law student who testified before Congress on the Obama Administration’s controversial health insurance regulation that would require all insurance companies to cover contraception. As a Jesuit school, Georgetown University does not cover contraception services in its student health care plan.
In the hearing, Fluke states:
When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected, and I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis, I hear from yet another woman from Georgetown or other schools or who works for a religiously affiliated employer who has suffered financial, emotional, and medical burdens because of this lack of contraceptive coverage.
…
In the media lately, conservative Catholic organizations have been asking: what did we expect when we enrolled at a Catholic school? We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success. We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of cura personalis, to care for the whole person, by meeting all of our medical needs … We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that if we wanted comprehensive insurance that met our needs, not just those of men, we should have gone to school elsewhere, even if that meant a less prestigious university. We refuse to pick between a quality education and our health, and we resent that, in the 21st century, anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.
AHA’s Naughty List: Rush Limbaugh
Of course, if you’ve heard of Sandra Fluke, then you certainly have heard of Rush Limbaugh and his comments following Fluke’s Congressional testimony.
On his radio show on March 5, Limbaugh said:
What does it say about the college co-ed Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex, she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
Since then, a media firestorm has erupted with several advertisers have pulled their ads from his radio show, resulting in an apology by Limbaugh—which was also criticized for not being sincere.
Submit your suggestions for the AHA’s Naughty vs. Nice List to hnn@americanhumanist.org. We’ll hold a poll at the end of the year where you can vote and see who tops each list!