Just a Fluke?

These last couple of weeks we’ve listened to the constant beat of the poor-me victim drum. Miss Sandra Fluke (pronounced as if the “e” weren’t there, which is just too ironic to be real) complained about the burden of having to spend $1000 a year on contraception (when it’s available for $9 a month just a few blocks from campus and she’s dating a super-rich jet-setter – go figure).  Her testimony – besides being filled with unsubstantiated statistics -- is confusing.

Let me get this straight: A 30-year-old law student – a left-wing feminist activist – testified to Congress about how the evil Jesuit college she attends won’t provide insurance that covers her birth control expenses. I don’t understand why a college would be responsible for anyone’s condom needs; I can’t imagine why at Georgetown coed’s efforts at non-conception are so expensive; and I really can’t fathom what useful information Fluke could provide for Congress  – don’t they have more pressing matters in front of them than collegiate sex practices?

The press seemed to believe that she was testifying as to the dire need for the government to step in – 1^st Amendment be damned – and stop this awful sexual oppression. They used her to demonstrate that conservatives are more worried about the niceties of our founding documents than the cruel burdens born by sexually active women; Republicans are, according to the media, engaged in a War on Women.

There’s a war on women?! Here?? Now??     

I’ve been trying for several days to come up with examples of oppressed women in America. I suppose, for instance, that most communities could do a better job protecting and assisting abused women. Then I hear the news that Egypt, in the midst of their much-touted Arab Spring, has just made it legal for Egyptian men to beat their wives. So things could be worse on that front.

Must be about jobs, but I can’t think of any profession that excludes women anymore. I suppose male strippers have to be men, but even that’s a little cloudy these days.

Miss Fluke talked a lot about women’s health issues. Like the way some Muslims circumcise their young women? Or commit honor killings? Those are most damaging to women’s health. No – she didn’t bring up those issues. Left-wing folk rarely do.

Women’s health issues… Hmmm …Now, I have been to doctors who were a tad condescending, but that doesn’t seem worth testifying to Congress about, and when that happened I just changed doctors. Of course that may be difficult to do once Obamacare kicks in, but that’s hardly the fault of the Republicans.

Oh, I see, “women’s health” is code for reproductive rights. Reproductive rights? I thought we had reproductive rights. American law allows a woman to have as many children as she wants. No one in Congress (not even a Republican) has ever proposed changing that. This isn’t China – not yet, anyway.

So pregnancy is what, a disease? No, it is just a natural consequence of having sex. For millennia women have been getting pregnant and bearing children, and they’ve done so without the help of advanced medicine. Women have also managed to avoid pregnancy sans medical assistance – it’s called abstinence. And yet, here’s a well-educated young woman who thinks it’s a national crisis that she and her friends might have to pay in order to avoid the logical outcome of what, up until recently, was considered immoral behavior. So “reproductive rights” means, then, that she has a right to have sex and someone else should pay to help her avoid reproducing. Got it.

Now, which amendment covers that? It must be more important than a person's right to practice his religion. It’s evidently more urgent than the right of radio hosts to call a spade a spade. It certainly has become more important than the human life a woman might be conceiving. Where is all that in the Constitution?

Actually, I doubt if Ms. Fluke has many concerns about our Constitution. Yet without it we could be living like the women in the Middle East who aren’t even be allowed to leave their houses without a male relative. Here, because of the protections of the Constitution we are free to come and go as we please. True, we may have to pay for our own contraception, but that’s hardly oppression.

I just can’t drum up any Susan B. Anthony indignation on Ms. Fluke’s behalf. The closest I see American women coming to oppression are 6-inch spiked heels and under-wire bras, but nobody is making us wear them. And no one is forcing us to dress in burqas.

I count myself, and all my American sisters, as the most blessed women this earth has ever hosted. Nothing about my life requires the urgent care of the federal government, no major injustice needs rectifying, no provision needs to be made. In fact, the more they leave me alone, the better I like it. There is no war on women here -- but there might be if we keep making begging, whining fools of ourselves. I’d like to believe that we’re tougher than that. I’d like to believe that this busy activist is just a fluke.