Sandra Fluke Said What I Have Wanted to Hear at Any Convention For A Long While

(I know, WSJ--but they had the video up!)

She spoke to the stark choice for women's rights under the different parties:

In that America, your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won't stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party. It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms. An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds we don't want and our doctors say we don't need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it; in which politicians redefine rape so survivors are victimized all over again; in which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve help, and which don't. We know what this America would look like. In a few short months, it's the America we could be. But it's not the America we should be. It's not who we are. 

We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. An America in which our president, when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors—and stands with all women. And strangers come together, reach out and lift her up. And then, instead of trying to silence her, you invite me here—and give me a microphone—to amplify our voice. That's the difference.

 I bolded the text of the speech that relates to recent legislation to make a point--Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan aren't just useless for women's reproductive freedom--they aren't benign. They are actively malignant towards the idea that women can make choices regarding their reproductive health, and they are gutless in terms of standing up for even basic civility towards women in the face of ad hominem attacks, as were waged against Fluke. I'm not looking for chivalry--chivalry is dead and good riddance! But even a tacit recognition that an unfair characterization had skewed the dialogue, just for the purposes of reopening the conversation between one party (the GOP) and the women who wondered why their bodies and choices were left to the determination of men alone--never took place.

I am very glad she was featured in prime time--because the War on Women is real, and she very capably explained how, and who is waging it.