LifeNews Note: Reprinted with permission from Ethika Politika, the blog of the Center for Morality in Public Life.
Remember the Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke, who was forced to suffer through $3,000-worth of protected sex during her stint at law school? Turns out, there’s a bit more to the story.
According to some sources, Fluke might just have been a well-placed fake. Not exactly the young-and-helpless female law student most took her for, Fluke’s LinkedIn profile speaks for itself:
With a six year hiatus between her undergraduate time and GT Law, Fluke is probably closer to 30. And she’s had plenty of involvement with the pro-contraception agenda. A Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies major at Cornell, Fluke is also a past president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. While she’s presented herself in persona a woman suffering because of Georgetown’s policies, it’s more likely that Fluke has had her sights set on the school for quite a while.
In fact, it’s almost certain.
One Washington Post blogger published the following on 16 February:
Fluke came to Georgetown University interested in contraceptive coverage: She researched the Jesuit college’s health plans for students before enrolling, and found that birth control was not included. “I decided I was absolutely not willing to compromise the quality of my education in exchange for my health care,” says Fluke, who has spent the past three years lobbying the administration to change its policy on the issue. The issue got the university president’s office last spring, where Georgetown declined to change its policy.
Fluke says she would have used the hearing to talk about the students at Georgetown that don’t have birth control covered, and what that’s meant for them. “I wanted to be able to share their stories,” she says. “My testimony would have been about women who have been affected by their policy, who have medical needs and have suffered dire consequences.. . .The committee did not get to hear real stories I had to share, about actual women who have been dramatically affected by this policy.”
What did transpire, though, was a phone call from the Oval (read: Home) Office in support of Fluke’s plight, and encouraging her for “speaking out about the concerns of American women.” According to the White House, Obama’s concerns followed directly upon Rush Limbaugh’s disparaging remarks, naming Fluke as a “slut,” a “prostitute,” and as “having so much sex she can’t pay for it.”
Among others, one result of this curious turn of fact is the almost indefensible position opened up to by the president of Georgetown University, John D. DeGioia. The president, who has spoken out in defense of Fluke against her conservative rivals, now has to face the very loud music of welcoming and advocating a knowing instigator into his midst. If Fluke came to Georgetown precisely to cut her legal teeth on the school itself, DeGioia’s stance seems at best dichotomous. On the one hand, he’s responsible for defending the school’s policies; on the other, he’s (apparently) been party to an intentional and knowing act of subversion.
What’s more, if President Obama has at all been privy to the Fluke situation—and it’s hard to believe he wasn’t, since he felt confident enough to pay her a personal phone call—what has become of the highest office in the land?
If it turns out that Sandra Fluke was just a fake, perhaps not much will change. But doubtless, the implications of what has and is happening in the contraceptive wars will be upped substantially. More than anything, Fluke continues the narrative of The Big Lie, that a segment in this country seeks to make contraception illegal for all women. It is a scorched earth policy that is as likely to leave its practitioners in infamy as it is to succeed in advancing the agenda.
