LOS ANGELES, California — When the offensive, threatening messages started trickling in online, Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke had no idea her life was about to change forever. Perhaps she’d expected some blowback after testifying before national lawmakers that Catholic universities should provide contraception as part of students’ health coverage. But she didn’t expect to be called a whore by America’s most popular radio host.

Only after a friend filled her in did Fluke discover just what had happened.

“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan [sic] Fluke who goes before a Congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex?” Rush Limbaugh rasped into his microphone on Feb. 29, 2012.

“What does that make her?” the host continued, working himself into a performative lather as he posed the rhetorical question to his syndicated audience of millions of loyal followers. “It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

And so it was that Sandra Fluke became The Woman Rush Limbaugh Called a Slut. Limbaugh continued his assault for three days, subsequently unleashing the full fury of conservative demagoguery upon Fluke that spring.