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Dear Friend of America's Survival, Inc.:
I have posted the following column at Renew
America.
March 8, 2012
Will the "war on women" kill Limbaugh's radio
show?
By Cliff
Kincaid
Rush Limbaugh claims that MSNBC is hyping an alleged
"Republican War on Women," stemming from the controversy
caused by his vicious attacks on feminist Georgetown law
student Sandra Fluke, for which he has apologized.
Limbaugh's personal attacks on Fluke diverted attention
away from the attempt by Catholic and other religious and
political leaders to frame the issue in terms of private
religious institutions having the freedom to decide on
their own health coverage. Limbaugh has turned out to be
the best thing going for President Obama and the
Democrats.
Ironically, however, MSNBC itself has highlighted the
fact that the real "war on women" stems in part from some
of the birth control pills that Fluke apparently wants
made available to more and more women. During
her prepared
testimony to a Democratic policy group, Fluke
talked about the alleged health benefits of "prescription
birth control" but ignored the documented dangers and
side effects. Fluke,
on behalf of Law Students for Reproductive Justice at
Georgetown University, a Catholic institution, repeatedly
referred to birth control pills as "medication," without
noting the documented harmful effects that some of them
can cause.
This MSNBC story,
posted last December, talks about a 16-year-old girl by
the name of Lynsey Ley who began taking the birth control
pill known as Yaz to relieve severe menstrual cramping
and developed a terrible blood clot. "Now, she is among
the more than 10,000 American women who have filed class
action lawsuits or claims against the German
pharmaceutical giant Bayer, which makes Yaz, a popular
birth control pill," the story said. "Thousands more
claims are expected."
Lee's attorney, Noble McIntyre, senior partner and owner
of McIntyre Law,explains
her case in detail: "At the age of 16, Lynsey
began taking Yaz (drospirenone and ethinyl estradiol) to
relieve severe menstrual cramping. Soon afterward, she
became ill, and began experiencing even more pain than
before. It took doctors nearly a year to diagnose her
with a blood clot in her left lung, a condition known as
pulmonary embolism. Her doctors say it's too dangerous to
try to perform surgery to remove it, so Lynsey must take
blood thinners daily, and simply hope it dissolves. Every
day, she is at risk of the blood clot dislodging which,
if it blocks an artery, can be fatal."
Conservatives might be tempted to think such stories are
ploys by ambulance chasing trial lawyers. But the
evidence shows that many women have
suffered, even
died, because of birth control methods.
"You're Being Slowly Poisoned...by Birth Control Pills!"
is the headline on one
website devoted to women's empowerment and
women's rights. "Since the introduction of the Pill,
there's been an explosion of women's diseases and
maladies in a scope never experienced before in the
history of medicine," it says. The site links birth
control pills to the following health problems: migraine
headaches, PMS, breast cancer, heart disease, heart
attacks, strokes, blood clots, high blood pressure,
uterine cancer, infertility, depression, post-partum
depression, uterine fibroids, unnecessary hysterectomies,
and anxiety disorders.
The American Life League, a Catholic group, maintains a
websitewww.thepillkills.org which
tells the stories of women injured by birth control pills
and devices.
The Food and Drug Administration has itself raised
concern about the safety of Yaz and
has ruled that product labeling must be included about
studies suggesting a higher risk of blood clots
associated with their use. Even so,some
critics say that the FDA has been slow to
respond to studies outlining the risks from birth control
pills because some scientists on a drug safety advisory
committee have had conflicts of interest with the
companies making the pills.
The risk to women associated with some of these pills is
the big omission in the Limbaugh story, which has
degenerated into a he said/she said media extravaganza
that Fluke, with the support of Obama and the
liberal-left, is clearly winning. At this point, Limbaugh
is desperate to hang on to his job, as advertisers and
even stations abandon him over comments about her being a
"slut" and "prostitute." Limbaugh also demanded sex
videos of Fluke. As of March 5, a reported 45 advertisers
had canceled their advertising on his radio show.
Limbaugh's attack was based on the assumption that birth
control pills have no other medical purpose than
preventing pregnancy. That was false. Young women also
use them for such problems as irregular or absent
menstrual periods, menstrual cramps, acne, PMS, and
endometriosis. Some conservatives point
out that Limbaugh also got his facts wrong by
claiming Fluke was demanding tax-subsidized
contraception.
Limbaugh apologized to Fluke, who had also worked for the
pro-abortion NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund,
initially in the form of a
published statement on his website. But Obama,
acting like the dignified and concerned leader, called
her personally to demonstrate his sympathy with her
plight. At his news conference, Obama said he called
Fluke in part because he didn't want his own daughters to
grow up and be intimidated by such a verbal assault. This
sharp contrast is a big reason why Limbaugh is losing the
public relations battle. He didn't even have the guts to
call her personally to apologize, leading to speculation
that the hasty statement was a last-ditch effort to stop
the mass exodus of his advertisers.
If Limbaugh had wanted to seriously wade into the
controversy over birth control, rather than keeping the
story focused on the need to respect religious freedom,
he could have examined the evidence of its damage to
women's health, without casting aspersions on Fluke
personally. But Limbaugh didn't bother to do any
homework. On the other hand, those attacking Limbaugh
don't want to acknowledge that Fluke's "testimony" to the
Democratic Party group was not based on the complete
evidence at hand showing the risks and dangers associated
with the pills she was pushing.
Public Citizen, hardly a conservative group, demanded in
2007 that Yaz be banned and put the pill on
its "Do
Not Use" list.
Interestingly, the Daily Beast ran a
fascinating piece by Peter Schweizer on another
aspect of the birth control debate that has been
conveniently ignored — the role of drug makers in the
birth control business and how they stand to financially
benefit from the Obama mandate. He writes, "You've heard
of crony capitalism? Well this is America's first example
of crony contraceptives."
He explains, "Back in 2009, many observers were surprised
when Big Pharma came out in favor of President Obama's
health-care reform bill. The industry spent millions
running television ads in favor of the law and industry
lobbyists pushed hard for it. One important reason they
did so was the promise that with the new law they would
have a new market of millions of new customers. The
contraceptive mandate is a perfect example."
Big Pharma is a term used to describe the Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America.
He points out that "among President Obama's biggest
financial backers are precisely the Big Pharma companies
who benefit from the mandate." He citesSally
Sussman, head of government affairs for drug-maker
Pfizer, who is "one of his biggest campaign bundlers" and
recently co-hosted a fundraiser for Obama.
Schweizer compares Obama's birth control mandate to Texas
Governor Rick Perry's signing of an executive order that
required school girls in Texas to be vaccinated with
Gardasil, a controversial vaccine designed to fight
against a sexually transmitted virus. Perry's mandate was
strongly criticized by conservatives, who noted that
Perry's chief of staff had gone to work as a lobbyist for
Merck, the maker of Gardisil, and that Perry had received
financial contributions from the drug maker.
"Again," Schweizer writes, "a corporation supports a
politician who in turn issues a mandate that creates a
bigger market and larger profits for its product."
Fluke, however, had nothing to say in her testimony about
how the mandate she was endorsing would benefit the
controversial pharmaceutical industry. The media failure
to note this omission is another example of the bias that
has permeated the "debate" over the "War on Women."
Limbaugh is losing this debate and may lose his show. He
has no one to blame but himself. Armed with no facts and
a series of smears, Limbaugh, a college drop-out, went
into a battle with a young woman law student that he lost
and is continuing to lose. Conservatives can and should
do better than this. Limbaugh should go, before even more
damage to the cause is done.
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