I had a long and polite argument with one of my favorite people today about Rush Limbaugh’s position. We both agreed Rush’s language was inappropriate but smart business because it gave him free publicity. I maintained that Rush is simply wrong: I think contraception is a health issue worthy of coverage by insurance. My conversation partner said it isn’t: everyone has cheaper choices for contraception including condoms and abstinence. Why should the rest of us subsidize their expensive choice?

I tried the obvious arguments, but nothing worked. Many women die during pregnancy and childbirth; for them it’s obviously a healthcare issue. Nearly every woman I know feels it’s a healthcare issue, and we men should probably should listen to them even if we don’t completely understand. In this case, they’re sort of the experts. He disagreed.

I tried a different tactic. The country has widely accepted standards of healthcare and it’s reasonable to insist all health insurance meets those standards. Contraception falls into that category regardless of what anyone’s religion says. Or eyeglasses. What if a church hated eyeglasses? Should they be excluded from insurance a church gives its janitors? This didn’t work either. Contraception’s not a healthcare issue, he said.

It’s hard to come up with good metaphors, but of course I tried. It would be wrong to open a hospital in a religiously vegetarian country and provide insurance that only paid for meat-based meals. Would you argue that patients are free to have vegetarian meals catered if they’re willing to pay themselves? Why should the rest of us pay for their vegetarian meals?  I said that national standards count for something. He said no.

It’s wrong to impose one’s religious beliefs on others, I get that. It would be wrong to force a woman to practice birth control or eat meat if her religion prevented it.  It would be wrong for a woman-owned company to offer health insurance that paid for breast exams but not prostate screenings. All the arguments work in my own brain, but nothing was persuasive because they didn’t get down to the core of the problem. Finally, after we agreed to disagree and hung up our phones, I think I figured out what that core is. I may have discovered why Rush and many other men maintain a position at odds from most women. There’s an elephant in the conversation that both sides are ignoring.

Women, historically, have had much less control of their sex lives than men have. There have been very few female rapists. In many traditional cultures, wives were (and are) expected to “submit” to their husbands. They can’t “just say no.” To do so means going counter to their religion or culture. In some cases, “saying no” means getting hit by their drunk husband or boyfriend. That’s what men forget. We’re not all polite and civilized gentlemen.  A man’s sense of control, or even entitlement, is baked into the culture at least as a historical artifact. So is a woman’s concern about vulnerability. Because she can’t always control whether or not she has sex, she insists on at least having control of the results to her own body.

The preacher (or talk show host) who demands that “wives submit to their husbands” won’t suffer the cramps and labor pains that result.  Neither will the husband. They won’t have to put their careers on hold, or negotiate daycare, or maybe even change diapers (Mitt famously went on record as refusing to change diapers). Now those same old men want the woman to pay the price for that submission both physically and financially. Let them buy their own contraception, they say. It has nothing to do with us men.

To which the women of the country are saying, slow down there, Mr. Father Knows Best. Our mothers and grandmothers fought that battle back when Lucille Ball was a role model and girls couldn’t wear jeans to school. Back when Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore stunned the nation by starring in TV shows as  — gasp! — unmarried working women!

Now women are fantasizing about conducting their own “hearings” on the matter. Let me describe this fantasy for my male friends who still don’t quite get it.

The hearings would bring Rush and each of the GOP presidential candidates in front of a panel to testify about contraception, under oath, one at a time, on national TV. Rush, Mitt, Newt and Rick would  be forced to wear only hospital gowns that don’t really close in the back. The panel of inquisitors might be Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelious, Rachel Maddow and Oprah Winfrey. Kathy Griffin will provide color commentary for the TV audience. As Rush stands before them, the first to testify, an unsmiling Hillary glares down at him and opens the questioning:

“OK, Zippy,” she says.  ”You got some ‘splainin’ to do…”

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Tags: birth control, contraception, fluke, rush limbaugh