Campus Notes

About 300,000 pro-lifers marched through the middle of our nation’s capitol last month with scant coverage in the mainstream media.

But when a few college girls with a microphone kvetch that while they can afford to pay $50,000 per year to attend a Catholic college, they can’t afford condoms, you’ve got an instant media sensation.

So delighted has the media been that hundreds of news organizations have run stories highlighting the young students who make up the “Catholic Students for Women’s Health.” C-Span even covered their press conference.

The Huffington Post started their very sympathetic portrayal like this:

Single, 18-year-old female, likes having control over her own body, looking for affordable birth control.

That’s Keely Monroe’s summary of her life at Fordham University, a Jesuit college in New York. “Finding contraception at Fordham was about as easy as finding a good man from a want ad,” Monroe said of her alma mater at a press conference held Thursday in Washington by Catholic Students for Women’s Health.

One has to wonder if a good man is so hard to find, why does she feel the need for contraception?

But while one expects positive portrayals of such things at The Huffington Post, one should expect a little more from the mainstream media.

But in so many news reports this handful of young women speaking out in favor of birth control have been allowed to reshape the debate into a supposed need for contraception paid for by someone else. But what continuously gets lost in the media reports is why Catholic colleges must provide or pay for it.

Democrats on the Government Oversight and Reform committee stormed out of last Thursday’s hearing on the HHS mandate, because one of the young women from Georgetown University wasn’t allowed to testify. Mind you, the hearing was about religious liberty and not the need to fund young women’s ability to jump into bed with people they don’t particularly love or trust.

The dozen or so young women continually claim to be speaking for millions of young women. Presumably, the millions couldn’t clear up their schedules to join them at the press conference.

The group continuously claims that 98% of Catholic women use contraceptives. But if that’s the case, why the emergency need to provide it, since 98% of Catholic women already have some? Of course, that number has been proven a lie, but nobody mentioned that to the Catholic Students for Women’s Health. The media was too busy applauding them for speaking truth to power.

And why is it that these folks get to name themselves? Pro-lifers are always labeled “anti-abortion.” Why aren’t these young women labeled “anti-religious liberty?” I think we all know why.

One of the young women attends The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and said,  ”I’m paying $50,000 a year to go to college. I think that I should be able to get birth control with that $50,000.”

Huh? I’m guessing she skipped the logic course at Catholic University.

Did these folks not know they were attending Catholic institutions? They remind me of the people who move in next to an airport that’s been there for fifty years and then start complaining about the planes flying overhead. And then demand that the airlines should pay for the airport to be moved.

We can likely expect more of this. We’ll be sure to keep you updated.