Sandra Fluke Throws Down Gauntlet For Women’s Issues At DNC

Sandra Fluke was back last night, speaking emphatically about her experience being excoriated and vilified by Republicans after her testimony, appealing to female voters to show their displeasure at her treatment and by extension, the treatment of female constituents who want access to birth control and parity when it comes to basic rights and coverage.

Fluke opened with a point about her Congressional shut-out, saying that the incident was newsworthy because it involved Congress but that American women should not allow themselves to believe that such an incident is uncommon just because they only saw it once:

” … earlier this year, Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception. In fact, on that panel, they didn’t hear from a single woman, even though they were debating an issue that affects nearly every woman. Because it happened in Congress, people noticed.”

Fluke’s testimony and the Republican reaction to the “war on women” many spoke of afterwards was her next immediate point as the law student explains that the attempts to brush off the controversy over mandated transvaginal ultrasounds and refusal to cover birth control as a “distraction” are themselves a diversion:

“During this campaign, we’ve heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women—and how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past. Warnings of that future are not distractions. They’re not imagined. That future could be real.”

But where Sandra Fluke really brought it all together was her contrast of Obama’s decision to publicly support her versus Romney’s to stay silent and ignore the attacks on Fluke by many such as Rush Limbaugh, who called her a “slut” and insinuated she was a prostitute. Fluke implored:

“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.”

Fluke continued:

“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.”

Below, a full video of Sandra Fluke’s DNC speech. Do you think she impacted female voters?