Confused Today

I'm not a very political person, and my blog is very unpolitical.  But lately, I've been kind of confused about this very political debate about contraceptives.  I'm mainly confused because I thought this stuff was sorted out in the sixties and seventies.  Women's Liberation and all that jazz.  Birth Control for women=cool.  We can have some control over our lives and when we want to have children.  Our choice.  Seems pretty fair to me.  So needless to say I've been pretty confused as to why this is an issue. 

I've been following the story on and off through the newspaper, blogs, online articles, etc.  Today, I read a few blogs about Rush Limbaugh's recent comments and was flabbergasted.  There are really people out there that think women who would like to see affordable birth control are sluts and  prostitutes?  Really?  REALLY?

This really irritated me.  Seriously.  To the point where I actually checked to see if Limbaugh really said those things, because, seriously, how could someone be so ignorant.  And he did.  And he said worse than that.  It's sickening.  And now I can't stop thinking about it.

I think the initial argument here was that employers should be required to provide health insurance to their employees that provides birth control for women.  Not unreasonable in my opinion.  And I get that this makes churches mad, and I'm pretty sure they are going to be exempt.  So I'm just not really sure how this exploded into "If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it.  And I'll tell you what it is.  We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."  (Actual quote from the transcript of Rush Limbaugh)  That's disgusting.  Just disgusting.

And as upset, and confused and grossed out by this whole needless debate over birth control as I am, I'm saddened because I know that for years, women, men, doctors and congressmen have been fighting to require health insurance to cover infertility treatments.  If congress can't even agree to cover something as simple and common place as birth control for women, I see little hope of ever seeing coverage for infertility treatments.  And that just makes me very, very sad.