Rush Limbaugh May Have Been Right. Here's the Math!

I really have to sit back in complete admiration of the mainstream media today. They have held a clinic on how you systematically alter the focus of a debate this week.

As most of you know, a Georgetown Law student by the name of Sandra Fluke testified before congress about the inhumanity of Georgetown University not offering free contraception as part of its health plan to students. Rush Limbaugh responded to the testimony by basically calling Ms. Fluke a slut and a prostitute.

Now, I'm not going to fall into the trap of defending Rush Limbaugh.  He can do that himself -- he's an adult.  The debate has been shifted towards him and Ms. Fluke has been turned into a political martyr of sorts.  Instead, I will address the two most provocative words that he used and tell you what I think:


"Slut" -- This word is used mostly in an insulting manner to describe an individual, though it is usually a female, who is sexually promiscuous.  Ms. Fluke's claim that contraception costs $3,000 over the course of law school needs to be examined here in an attempt to ascertain the appropriateness of the term, "slut".  A prescription for birth control pills (without insurance) at Wal-Mart is $9.  That's the cheapest I found, and if I were testifying before congress on the affordability of contraception, I would find the lowest price possible so that I could not be debunked.  I would expect a law student to do the same.  Here's the math I came up with:

Starting contraception budget:                        $3000
- $9 a month * 36 months for law school          $324
- Diaphragm (not taking any chances here)        $75
-----------------------------------------------------
Amount left in the contraception budget          $2,601

Let's use a high price for condoms, say $1 a condom.  This leaves us with enough money to buy about 2,600 condoms, or 216 boxes of 12.  Despite the fact that we're already on the pill and using a diaphragm, we want to be as safe as we can possibly be.  So, we use a condom each and every time.  In order to use up 2,600 condoms over the course of three years (1,096 days assuming a leap year), then you would have to use 2.37 condoms a day.  In other words, sex two times a day and occasionally three.  Now, in my younger years, this would have made for a great weekend, but I would have been useless on Monday and Tuesday.  So, I would think that a single partner would be out of the question to maintain this kind of pace for condom consumption.  So, I think we have to assume multiple partners, most likely dozens.  Therefore if you are spending $3,000 on contraception over the course of 3 years, then you probably are a slut.  I'm sorry, but let's call a spade a spade.

"Prostitute" -- Prostitution suggests that the person paying is the recipient of the sex.  Since Ms. Fluke is asking the college to pay for her contraception (as thus to have sex), then she really can't be considered a prostitute unless she has sex with every student who pays tuition.  Georgetown Law School's enrollment in 2010 was 2,017 students, so current enrollment is probably very close to that number.  Let's assume half of these are men, which gives us about 1,000.  Let's assume 10% of these are gay.  That gives us 900.  This means that with her contraception budget, she could have sex with each tuition paying heterosexual male in the law school about three times over the course of three years.  Hmmm... maybe Rush was on to something here.