Sandra Fluke

I worry about my health a lot. Not because I’m unhealthy, but because I’m a hypochondriac. I don’t imagine symptoms, but when I do have symptoms, I became immediately and irrevocably convinced that they are cancer. Thanks, WebMD!

Most recently, back in October, I found a tiny red welt on my right breast. WebMD told me that I almost definitely had inflammatory breast cancer–a particularly aggressive strain. I called my boyfriend in the middle of the night and made him talk to me until the sun came up, so scared I was shaking all over. I thought of nothing but my imaginary cancer for three full days, until the red spot went away. My friend Destiny texted me regularly to ask how my cancer was doing. She and my mom and my boyfriend found my terror hilarious, but I don’t think they realized its depth.

I was completely sure that I had inflammatory breast cancer. I was even starting to cope with my imminent diagnosis.

It is not my intention to make light of breast cancer. To the contrary. I have nothing but sympathy and respect for people who struggle with real cancer. I was in a state of abject misery over my imaginary cancer, so I can’t even imagine what it must be like when it’s not imaginary.

In any case, this is a pattern with me. I have been sure I was having a stroke about a dozen times in my life, when it turns out I was just really tired. I’ve had imaginary heart attacks, blood clots, pulmonary embolisms, and tumors.

I’ve finally broken myself of this bad habit of faux health crises with the simple solution of no longer googling my symptoms, and staying away from WebMD.

But you can imagine my relief when I discovered that someone has recently come into the public eye who also suffers from the embarrassing condition of imaginary health problems.

Sandra Fluke, the suddenly famous (or infamous, depending on who you talk to) Georgetown law student who publicly lamented the lack of free contraceptives available to women on campus, also seems to have created a health care crisis out of nothing.

Just like the tiny red spot on my chest was not inflammatory breast cancer, Fluke’s lack of freebies is not a health care issue. It is nothing. She could get birth control pills or condoms for cheap or free at lots of different places: Planned Parenthood, other women’s clinics, publicly funded health clinics, regular old doctor’s offices, etc.

She doesn’t want free or cheap contraception from anywhere, though. She wants free or cheap contraception provided by a Catholic university. It’s not about access. It’s about forcing Catholics to do what she thinks they should do. She’s been in the news for days now talking about the tragedy of turning “women’s health” into a “political football,” when she is doing exactly that.

For all their fuming that we want to intrude into their sex lives, they sure are inviting us in, aren’t they? “U.S. out of my uterus! Oh, except, buy me stuff for my uterus!”

Funny story. Stop me if you’ve heard it. It’s last Thursday, and Congress is holding a hearing on the HHS contraception mandate in Obamacare. (You may have heard a whisper or two about this issue). They want an unknown Goergetown co-ed to testify, but they turn in her name too late to undergo the standard vetting period. So, Pelosi and the gang set up a press conference and stage it to look like a Congressional hearing.

That’s right, friends! Fluke was not testifying at a hearing. It was a press conference.

The whole thing is a big giant lie, just like my mosquito bite that wasn’t breast cancer. Sandra Fluke and the women of Georgetown University have more birth control options than “any woman in history,” as The Daily Caller aptly puts it. There are dozens of ways in which they can get pills and condoms for little or nothing.

Then, there is the insane idea of not having sex at all, but who does that? Freaks and ugly people, that’s who! (Oh, and me. Insert joke about Kristen being an ugly freak in comments below.)

Here’s the bottom line: no one is waging war on women’s health care. Birth control pills are not health care. They don’t cure diseases. (In fact, some believe they cause them.) Many non-Catholic Christians (and some cafeteria Catholics, although far fewer than the media would have you believe) have no problem with oral contraception and IUDs whatsoever, despite my incessant hollering that they are awful.

Guess what, gals? Rick Santorum is not hiding in your garage waiting for you to go to sleep so he can take the little pink compact out of your purse and leave a tiny Bible in its place. That is the political rhetoric of a media that is asleep at the wheel, and if you’re buying it, you’re asleep in the passenger seat.

I think birth control pills and IUDs are horrible, but I’m not a politician. I can say that, and I don’t care what you think about it because I don’t need your vote. Last time I checked, the GOP doesn’t listen to me, so rest easy. Your pills are not going anywhere, ladies. You can still engage in all the recreational sex your little hearts desire.

What you can’t do is expect me — or anyone else — to pay for it.

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Kristen Walker makes people mad on the Internet and sometimes tweets.

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