Sandra Fluke has shown us the new lows to which the women rights movement has fallen.

It is not necessary to denigrate Ms. Fluke or to speculate on her sexual proclivities, but it is important to note who she is, what she is doing, and what she hopes to achieve.

Ms. Fluke, who has recently testified before Congress on behalf of free birth control from Catholic Georgetown Law School, is the product of a sexual and moral revolution that has now resulted in the reduction of women's rights to the singular right of unrestrained sexual activity protected by universal and "free" birth control. 

She is the face of a radical leftist feminism which seeks a brave new world established by fiat utilizing supra-constitutional means, most especially and most recently via the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  The restraints and processes enjoined by the U.S. Constitution, utilized with success by former reformers, apparently are just too tedious to work through.

A once and often worthy civil rights movement has become a mere parody of its former self.  Its most recent heroine has been groomed to subvert the constitutional guarantees of religious liberties and gut the long-established principle of separation of church and state.  She now blandly and dispassionately advocates the evisceration of religious freedom in America. 

And for what? 

Not for women's "health," as is so disingenuously claimed. 

No.

She is fighting for the "right" to have the means and resources to be free of the consequences of sexual activity, gratis the Catholic Church -- which institution, by the way, is providing Ms. Fluke with a stellar legal education.

Time was when real feminists fought for the right of little girls to be educated as well as little boys.  Time was when they fought protracted and heartbreaking battles for women's right to vote.  Time was when they fought for the right to own their own property, to be in charge of their own monies, to be equals before the law.

Time was there were heroines such as Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Whatever their personal vagaries, oddities, and conflicts may have been, they all fought for core values, values which included women having equal rights in education, in politics, in their homes, and before the law.  They fought and they suffered on behalf of future generations of women, and the victories they did achieve were made possible by changing laws and/or amending the Constitution -- amendments which gave the vote to blacks and women.

We don't see enough of such women anymore. 

We see far too many Flukes.

Here's a message from the beyond from Abigail Adams and other feminists of the past for Sandra Fluke and other radical feminists who have been convinced that birth control subsidized by religious institutions against the conscience is the most burning issue facing women today:

My dears, there are far more heroic victories to be won than seeing your pet peeve "rectified" by HHS mandate.  There are more serious battles to be joined in the struggle for female emancipation than making sure insurance companies allied with religious institutions provide you with the means to have safe sex, no matter what the cost to religious liberties.  There are injustices and atrocities toward women which take precedent over your free birth control agenda, an agenda you wish to impose on all, regardless of their constitutional right to refuse coercion against conscience.

All over the world, women and children are being trafficked for sex; women and girls are being subjected to genital mutilation; unborn girls are the victims of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide; and women are subjected to the horrifying strictures and consequences of sharia law.  This is to say nothing of the women who are enslaved by the demeaning and destructive practice of polygamy or the women of the world who are without clean water and food for themselves and their children. 

Time was, apparently, when some of the issues listed above were important to you, Ms. Fluke.

So could you and your sister feminists possibly turn your attention to the real battles on behalf of women's health and welfare?  There are constitutional, legal vehicles provided to you for recourse against injustices, real or perceived.  The problem is that you want to ride roughshod over them to achieve your immediate agenda.  Doing things the way the founders of our Republic established appears to be just so, so tedious for you.

In the meantime, for the rest of us traditional feminists, as the Fluke ideal is held up and defended as the acme of modern womanhood by the increasingly repulsive left, shall we passively abandon the truly noble ideals which have formed women of character in both ancient and modern times to be trampled underfoot as mere relics of the past?  Shall we, too, ignore the honorable ways and established vehicles with which to fight injustices?

An ideal woman is beautifully depicted in ancient Hebrew wisdom literature, which describes her as, kind, just, generous, gracious, industrious, faithful, and God-loving.  Is the thousands-of-years-old Judeo-Christian model of the ideal woman of Proverbs, exemplified by women such as Abigail Adams, to be completely forsaken in favor of a contemporary Fluke?

Once upon a time, even for secular feminists, the ideal was equality of men and women before the law -- equality of opportunity to pursue careers of one's choosing.  Once upon a time, feminists resented the reduction of women to the status of mere chattel or sex objects. 

But now we are seeing secular feminism come full circle.  Now the new radical feminist is glorying in being a mere sex object, and she boldly presents herself as such.  Fluke, the latest representative of the new feminism, wants to boldly crusade for the "right" of women to be mere sex objects.  Further, women are to be subsidized for maintenance of their reduced and tiny identity by being given free birth control.

Fluke's quietly truculent advocacy of subsidized birth control in order to establish sexual "freedom," no matter what the cost to others, reminds one of Brave New World's ubiquitously sexual Lenina Crowne, who, protected by her government-dispensed Malthusian birth control belt, thought it her "right" to have sex with anyone at any time.

What an ideal woman.

For the sake of such an ideal, the new sexual world order is to go forward regardless of who is forced to pay for it against his or her conscience or who is against the infringement of the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and separation of the State from the Church.

"Oh brave new world, that has such people in't."

What a mess of pottage is being offered as a tradeoff for our constitutionally protected birthright as women created by God, standing as equals alongside men. 

Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where she was awarded the Charles Hodge Prize for excellence in systematic theology.  She is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and other blogs.  She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.