Text of Sandra Fluke’s Statement to the Democratic Panel re HHS Contraception Mandate

[rolanni]

Here’s the link — there’s video and a transcript.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[doushkasmum.livejournal.com]

Gosh. Until I read this I had not realised why this was such a big deal. Here in Australia, my script for contraception costs me $15 for 4 months.

American medication prices are insane. If the government really wants this to be accessable to everyone, why not just subsidise the medication and make it affordable without insurance? I suppose that would make too much sense.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Well, subsidizing the medicine to make it affordable won't happen because a great many very loud people in the US think that women having access to contraception is very, very, very wrong and will do anything to make access difficult, if not impossible.

The American health care system is insane. The American politicians are even moreso.

For years and years and years I took birth control pills to treat endometriosis. Without the pills I would not have been able to function, the pain was so bad. Birth control pills cost the the earth, even then, and it's only gotten worse, since.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

And the same drug companies are selling the same medications in Canada where they cost far less. Yet they tell us that the US prices are necessary to fund their research and make their legitimate profit! Does this mean that they are selling to the rest of the world at a loss? If you think so I've got a bridge to sell.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

And quite aside from all the "off label" uses, I don't believe that a religiously-affiliated institution should be allowed to say what kinds of health care coverage their employees should have access to. The minute you become a business, you become responsible to the state, not the church. It's a two-way wall, IMO.

Fat Loudmouths

[rnjtolch.livejournal.com]

So the tub of lard kind of sort of apologized the Ms. Fluke for calling her names.

Re: Fat Loudmouths

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

For calling her names for THREE DAYS IN A ROW? Upping the ante each day? And doing his best to put forward the absolutely untrue notion that the more sex a woman has, the more birth control pills she needs to take? As if (as Steve says) each pill were an ICBM?

No, no, he's done his damage; now he has to regroup so his advertisers can feel OK about coming back.

Sigh.

I think I need a cup of coffee...

Yes, Comedian Rush Limbaugh...

[catherine ives (from livejournal.com)]

Comedian Rush Limbaugh, as Keith Olbermann calls him, made a half hearted apology to Ms.Fluke saying he was sorry he used offensive language. Well, that's something. I've never heard Rush apologize before. Usually if any of the Republican pols criticise him they are on the air before the end of the day apologizing to Him. I think by now he's lost about 10 sponsors. I hope they don't come back.

[rjlona.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting a link to her testimony. I had not heard most of it before, and I found it reasonable and intelligent.

Most of the comments after the transcript, however, are appalling. I am increasingly frightened of my fellow citizens and the directions right-wing politics is driving my country.