Limbaugh blames Dems for making birth-control issue political

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh blamed Democrats for turning contraception into a political issue to scare Americans away from the Republican Party.

"The Democrats need these planks to scare voters about the Republican Party," Limbaugh said on his radio show Friday. "Contraception is the replacement plank for abortion in the Democrat Party platform. That's what's happening here in a political sense."

Limbaugh's comments came a little more than an hour after President Obama called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student at the center of a growing controversy over the administration's new new rule on birth control, to express support for her. The whole episode began after Fluke gave testimony at a congressional hearing before Congress in which she expressed support for the Obama administration's contraception mandate, which requires insurers for certain religious institutions to provide contraceptive care without a co-pay.

In response, Limbaugh called Fluke a "slut." Since then Democrats have worked to tie Republicans to Limbaugh's comments.

Earlier on Friday the president of Georgetown University sent a letter out to the school calling for civil discourse in discussing the topic and said some of the negative response to Fluke's testimony has been "vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of the student."

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