Get facts on what college student said

I have to ask Jeff Gorden, who wrote about how he would never want his daughters to be like Sandra Fluke (Fence Post, March 17), if he actually bothered to watch or read the transcript of her actual testimony. He says she “would want the people to pay for her drugs to prevent her sexual activity from resulting in pregnancy.”

Mr. Gorden, she never once in her testimony referred to her sexual activity. She never asked for anyone else to pay for contraception. She related some stories of students she knew who needed birth control pills to treat other conditions like endometriosis and ovarian cysts. Not covering them makes the coverage for women at Georgetown inferior to the coverage that male students receive. She also noted that students at Georgetown pay for their own health insurance.

Had Mr. Gorden looked at her actual testimony instead of relying on the wildly inaccurate accounts given by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, I hope he would have come to a different conclusion. If Mr. Gordon has daughters, what would he say if they earned a scholarship to Georgetown but had to weigh the scholarship against the cost of medication that was not covered by the student health insurance that they were paying for? How would he feel if his daughter complained that she paid the same for a health insurance policy as a male student yet did not get the same coverage, and was then branded as a slut and a prostitute?

Mr. Gordon closes by saying they should have had a “young lady who is abstaining from sex until married to testify.” Is he saying that unless a female student is a virgin she has no credibility? If that’s what he really thinks, I can only hope that he has sons.

Patti Siwicki

Elk Grove Village