Limbaugh returns to slut shaming: Women who need the pill should stop doing 'a certain thing'
Radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday suggested that women who needed birth control but couldn't not get it because it was banned by their religious employers could solve their problems if they stopped having sex.
On his radio show, the conservative talker continued his response to the Supreme Court's ruling that the federal government could not force Hobby Lobby to cover contraception for its female employees by asking why birth control was so important "to the human condition" in the first place.
"Eye exams, dental exams, dental work are not mandated by Obamacare," he opined. "But contraception is! Birth control pills are!"
"Which is worse? To go blind from lack of regular eye exams or to get pregnant?" Limbaugh continued. "And again, pregnancy is something that you have to do -- to cause. It doesn't just happen to you while you are walking down the street, except in the case of sexual abuse. But in the normal, everyday flow of events, pregnancy requires action that has consequences."
He argued that the federal government was treating pregnancy like an "imposition that women need to be protected from."
"And yet, they wouldn't have the problem if they didn't do a certain thing," Limbaugh quipped.
In fact, millions of women use birth control for medical reasons other than preventing pregnancy.
A Guttmacher Institute study found in 2011 that only 42 percent of women used the pill only for birth control, and 1.5 million women relied on it "exclusively for noncontraceptive purposes."
Listen to the audio below from The Rush Limbaugh Program, broadcast July 2, 2014.
(h/t: Media Matters)